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T A B L E S
Buying Ortho Tables
That Everybody Loves
Select the perfect workhorses for your orthopedic ORs.
Kate Gillespie, MBA, RN, NE-BC | Voorhees, N.J.
GO TO THE ORIGINAL SOURCES Ask your surgeons and staff what
they want in an ortho table, says Kate Gillespie, MBA, RN, NE-BC, administrator of the Virtua Joint Replacement Institute in Voorhees, N.J.
Around this time last year, I began the task of outfitting our new, state-of-the-art joint replacement center — all 53,000 square feet of it. I had a lot of rooms to furnish: 4 of our 6 ORs, 30 private inpatient rooms and a therapy gym. My most critical capital equipment decision? Hands down, which OR tables to buy.
After all, the tables I selected would be the centerpieces of our orthopedic ORs for years
to come. They'd have to handle the heavy pounding of around 1,500 total hip and knee cases each year. And they'd have to please our divergent group of surgeons, one of whom was most concerned with how low the
table could go and one of whom was most concerned with how high the table could go.
Four tables and more than $150,000 later, I'm here to share what I learned about buying ortho tables that will satisfy your surgeons, techs and nurses, and position your patients safely and securely. I can condense my advice to 3 steps:
