• Standardized temperature taking. During our initial chart review,
we discovered nobody took patients' temperatures the same way. Pre-
op staff used oral thermometers, the OR team opted for esophageal
probes or strip sticker thermometers, and PACU nurses used tempo-
ral scanners. That made it difficult to compare temperatures captured
in each area.
We realized it's important to decide on a single temperature-taking
method, and to use it consistently in pre-op, the OR and PACU.
During the trial, we instructed all staff to use a continuous tempera-
ture monitoring sensor. You place the half-dollar-sized sensor on the
patient's forehead, near the temporal artery, and plug it into a wall-
mounted control unit, which displays continuous temperature readings
on an easy-to-read screen. As patients move from pre-op to the OR and
to the PACU, staff unhook and reattach the sensor from control units
mounted in each area. The system can even integrate with electronic
anesthesia records to automatically record intraop temperatures.
It's a simple, convenient and, perhaps most importantly, standard-
ized way to capture accurate temperature readings during the entire
surgical process.
• Facility-wide buy-in. Before the trial began, I created a
PowerPoint presentation that touched on the basics of patient warm-
ing and distributed it to all pre-op, OR, PACU and anesthesia staff.
The education paid off. Most members of the perioperative team
assumed patient warming was solely about making patients comfort-
able before surgery and were unaware of the complications it pre-
vents. They were surprised to learn that pre-warming lessens the
impact of redistribution hypothermia, the significant temperature
drop that occurs when thermal energy shifts from the body's core to
the periphery soon after anesthesia induction. Failing to pre-warm
patients in pre-op forces you to play catch-up in the OR in order to
3 4 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • M A Y 2 0 1 9
