you invariably inhale. At a previous job, he used a spray with a 10-
minute kill time. It was an effective product, but the dry time didn't
allow for quick room turnovers. When he arrived at Benefits
Ambulatory Surgery Center, he made the switch to a wipe with a 3-
minute kill time. He says the time saved and benefit to staff safety
have "been well worth the additional pennies it costs to stock them."
Cherokee (Iowa) Regional Medical Center added disinfectant wipes
earlier this year, says OR Manager Dondee Halverson, RN. She says
surface cleaning is more effective and goes a lot faster — they've
saved about 10 minutes per room turnover since they began using
them.
Grab and go
"We used to use bins almost as big as a shoebox, and fill them with
supplies needed for a case," says Ms. Hoffman. That's not an efficient
way to work. The procedure packs she invested in shave minutes off
room turnovers, says Ms. Hoffman, who's revamping her cataract
packs to eliminate the opening of individual items (except for gowns
and gloves). The packs run about $30, which Ms. Hoffman says is a
more cost-effective option than buying supplies individually. She's
preparing to add another 8 to 10 items to the mix, which will increase
the per-pack cost by less than $2.
Ms. Halverson's staff of 4 nurses (including herself) and 1 tech
amazes surgeons with the speediness of their room turnovers. They
handle pre-op, post-op and every aspect of patient care, and still find
time to keep rooms humming with endoscopic, laparoscopic and
orthopedic procedures. Custom procedure packs help them ready
rooms as quickly as possible. "The packs take 5 minutes to open and
set up, compared with the 15 to 20 minutes it would take us to pull
and open the supplies individually," she says.
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