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A U G U S T 2 0 1 4 | O U T P AT 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
walked across a facility bridge on the 4th floor of the hospital,"
reports another administrator, "the surveyor looked out of the win-
dow and saw a cigarette butt on the roof. She made security walk her
out onto the roof to verify, and cited the hospital, which was a non-
smoking facility, for letting employees or contractors smoke in a
restricted area."
3. Expired hand sanitizer. Here's an add-on for your to-do
list: Check your soap dispensers. "We had no idea that the hand sani-
tizer and hand soaps in the dispensers had expiration dates," says
Debby Augst, RNFA, CNOR, nurse manager of the Limestone Surgery
Center in Gainesville, Ga. "Our accreditation surveyor obviously knew
this and went straight to the dispenser, opened it and several were
expired. Who knew?" Other than the surveyor, our guess is not a lot of
people.
4. Is that a T-shirt under your scrub top? You might
want to take a glance at what your people are wearing under their
scrubs. "We were cited because a staff member was wearing a T-shirt
under a scrub shirt," says Patrick Linton, MD, director of endoscopy
at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York. "They said it was an
infection risk. If any part of it was visible, it was not acceptable. We
were not aware of this, but we are now."
5. Which way is out? Some reported (and questionable)
dings seem to spring from a by-the-book mentality that doesn't seem
A C C R E D I T A T I O N
The surveyor wanted to be able to see an exit
sign from any point in the building, so we had
to add 6 more. We now have 25 exit signs!
