Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Special Edition: Surgical Construction - February 2020 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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our airflows are so well designed," says Arthur Brito, AIA, CAU, EDAC, LEED AP BD+C, WELL AP, an associate principal and senior vice president and healthcare practice leader at architecture and design firm HKS in Miami, Fla. "We conducted a simulation study and found contamination in the OR was less related to the number of door openings and more to the number of people in the OR," says Anjali Joseph, PhD, EDAC, endowed chair in architecture + health design and research at Clemson (S.C.) University's College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities. Ultimately, the more crowded your OR typically is, the more space you should build. Still, keeping the OR doors closed during surgery is good practice. One way to reduce door openings is to increase visibility into the rooms. "The reason you want to look in is to understand what stage the case is in," says Bryan Langlands, AIA, FACHA, EDAC, LEED GA, principal and medical planner with architecture, planning and design firm NBBJ in Seattle, Wash. The obvious way to avoid "pop-ins" is to include windows in OR designs, so staff can easily check the status of a case. Avera McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls, S.D, is in the process of renovating 14 ORs originally built in the early 1980s. "One thing that's been very helpful is we put large windows in the doors," says Mary Leedom, RN, MS, NEC, an assistant vice president for perioperative services. "I believe that's minimized traffic in our rooms." The storage dilemma You don't want people constantly leaving the room during surgery to get supplies, but you also don't want clutter. Should you have more storage in the OR to prevent door openings? It's a difficult choice. Dr. Joseph recommends any OR storage be seamless and integrated 5 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 • F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 0

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