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IDEAS That Work
AFTER THE CASES ARE DONE
Ask Your Staff to Empty Their
Pockets of Valuable Supplies
A
fter a long day in the OR, you discover 3
packs of ophthalmology suture in your
shirt pocket. You know that the eye
suture is expensive, but you really don't want to
get dressed and go to the OR to put them away.
"I'll just put them on the bench and someone will
put them away." What happens? Housekeeping
cleans the locker room and throws the garbage
on the bench in the trash. Add in some sterile
skin glue, cautery tips, suture scissors, a clamp,
skin stapler and any other item that will fit into
your warm-up jacket pockets, and you've got a
lot of wasted supplies. Instruct staff to empty
their pockets of supplies at the end of a shift in
small cardboard boxes you can place in the OR
lounge, in PACU and in dressing rooms. This constant reduction of waste will add up over time.
Clare Pennington, RN, BSN
Healthcare Partners in Practice
Kirkwood, Mo.
clarep@hpg-llc.com
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EMPTY YOUR POCKETS Staff can
empty their pockets full of sterile and
reusable products in a shoebox — rather
than leaving them on the locker bench for
housekeeping to throw away.
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 | S E P T E M B E R 2013
