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SAFETY
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Plan ahead. Conduct a tabletop drill with leaders from each of your
facility's departments. Get the local fire marshal involved at this
point: He'll be more than happy to participate and will provide valuable
insights on planning and producing effective drills. For example, we
were naïve to how quickly we had to move during fire emergencies. Our
town's marshal provided a sense of urgency and seriousness as we discussed who would do what and when. He told us fire toxins can kill in a
matter of minutes, and patients had to be out of the surgical department
before his fire team arrived and laid hoses across exits where we
planned to roll stretchers. Those are things we hadn't considered.
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Set expectations. Have department heads discuss their needs for the
drill and specifically for when patients need to be moved to safety.
You might be surprised that even though nurses, techs, surgeons and anesthesia providers are all interested in getting patients out of ORs as quickly
as possible, they have various goals in mind during the process. Anesthesia
providers, for example, focus solely on securing patients' airways before
they're moved. Techs and nurses, meanwhile, want to know where the
equipment they'll need for the safe transport of patients is stored and how
they can best access it. Moving forward with these different perspectives in
mind will help you plan a drill that meets the evacuation needs of each surgical team member.
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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 | N O V E M B E R 2012
