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O P H T H A L M O L O G Y
One facility manager mounts mobile vital signs monitors to stretcher chairs. The
same monitor rides with patients throughout all phases of care, so staff don't have
to disconnect patients from and reconnect them to stationary monitors in pre-op,
the OR and PACU.
• Attitude. Do you think many hands make for light work? Not so, says Lisa Fields,
administrator of the Eye Surgery Center of Augusta in Georgia, who likes to keep
her surgical team lean and mean. "Overstaffing gives everyone a carefree, time-tospare attitude," she says. "Adequate staffing puts everyone in a busy position so
the flow of the day is smoother."
Would recruiting surgeons who operate faster improve cataract efficiency?
Maybe, but many respondents say most surgeons operate at comparable speeds.
For most facility leaders, greater efficiency is a mindset. "I think it's a matter of the
entire team, including the surgeons, working together to provide quality care in a
timely manner," says Mary Radke, RN, BSN, manager of the Dakota Surgery and
Laser Center in Bismarck, N.D. She believes surgeons willing to lend a hand
between cases are far more valuable than docs who pride themselves on operating
quickly.
Case in point: The physicians at Perimeter Surgery Center in Cookeville, Tenn.,
are actively involved in turning over rooms, according to Ginny Tayes, the facility's
director. While the scrub nurses and circulators work to get rooms ready for the
next case, the docs take dirty instrument trays to the autoclave, bring back clean
sets, spike BSS bottles and help scrub nurses open wrapped supplies on the back
table when time permits.
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— Daniel Cook
O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | J A N U A R Y 2013
