5. Make it easy
Provide staff with a
"smoke evacuation setup"
document, which outlines
the step-by-step process of
preparing smoke evacua-
tion pencils for use and
encourage team members
to let you know if they
have any questions. Add
the devices to surgeons' preference cards. That way they'll be pulled in
advance and always available for smoke-producing cases.
If there was anything about our hospital's smoke-free initiative that sur-
prised me, it was how quickly and easily our surgeons came around to
incorporating evacuators into their cases. A few took a little while to
make the transition, but we were pretty bold and determined. Staff would
simply open up a device and hand it to them on the field. It worked —
surgeons started using them until the practice became routine.
A clear improvement
After going smoke-free, the difference has been pretty remarkable.
On those rare occasions when we walk into an operating room and
discover that people aren't using an evacuator system correctly, it's
very noticeable — like walking into a room where people have been
smoking cigarettes. The first question is always, Aren't you guys
using smoke evacuation in here? Working in smoke-filled ORs is
now the exception, not the norm, and that lets us all breathe much,
much easier.
OSM
2 6 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • O C T O B E R 2 0 1 8
• BE PROACTIVE Put evacuators on surgeon preference cards and open them up in ORs to ensure they're used
during smoke-generating cases.
Pamela
Bevelhymer,
RN,
BSN,
CNOR
Ms. Ruff (jruff@ccf.org) is an assistant nurse manager of surgery at Cleveland
Clinic Marymount Hospital in Garfield Heights, Ohio.
