professional protecting the lives of your
patients, but with exposure to smoke,
you're risking your own life every single
day.
What can you do to convince your
staff and administration to install smoke
evacuation systems? Perhaps our hard-
won success story can give you some
ideas.
1. Present the proof
The science around surgical smoke is vir-
tually irrefutable at this point: It's bad for
everyone in the OR, and the more time
people spend there, the more harmful it
can be. The dangers of surgical smoke are well-documented in the litera-
ture, and AORN has made a huge push to raise awareness and get legis-
lation passed in statehouses across the country to mandate the use of
smoke evacuation systems in ORs. Rhode Island and Colorado have
passed such laws. Several more states are studying the issue, and AORN
is throwing serious weight behind those efforts. Chances are, however,
that smoke evacuation systems aren't mandatory in your state yet. Even
worse, there might be many people at your facility who are dismissive of
the idea, or who really don't fully understand the dangers of surgical
smoke.
Make smoke evacuation an evidence-based project. Be prepared
with peer-reviewed research and a cost-benefit analysis. At the end of
the day, though, this is about staff safety, which should be a high prior-
ity. I myself didn't know how important smoke evacuation was until a
vendor held an in-service years ago.
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 9
• END USERS Surgeons need to be convinced that
evacuation systems won't interfere with their pre-
ferred methods of operating.
