Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.
Issue link: http://outpatientsurgery.uberflip.com/i/874010
assign each staff to a particular task when they arrived to do turnover: tables, lights, bed. But it didn't work. It was chaos and then you kept asking, 'Did you get the lights? Did you get the …?'" Ms. Loomis favors a leaner approach to readying the OR for the next case: deploying 2 environmental services techs to work in tandem with the RN and tech from that room. "It's also helpful," she says, "to have an anesthesia tech to take care of the anesthesia end of things." A 10-minute turnover is the goal at most surgical centers, but there aren't always enough people to roll up their sleeves and pitch in, say facility leaders who favor an all-hands-on-deck approach. "At times employees forget that everyone should assist with room turnover," says Margaret Chappell, RN, MS, CASC, a senior vice president of operations with Ambulatory Surgical Centers of America. "Our house- keeping attendants do a good job, but we need more of them," says a nurse manager. One of the things that stood out in our survey of nearly 100 nurse managers about the challenges of OR turnovers is that staff will some- times go to great lengths to, ahem, avoid cleanup duty. A favorite stall tactic of nurses is milking the time it takes to chart a case. Surgeons who use the computer in the OR when the RN circulator needs to close out the case and call for housekeeping unwittingly delay turnover and the start of the next case. "Physicians need to carry a lap- top or the OR needs 2 computers," says a respondent. While many respondents say it's difficult to have speedy and thor- ough turnover without a dedicated turnover team, only 20% of respon- dents have such a hit squad. More often, a combination of housekeep- ers, OR assistants and RN/scrub staff pitch in — whoever's willing and whoever's available. "Usually it is done by [environmental services] with the help from any free support staff and the OR staff from that room," says Ms. Loomis. 1 0 0 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7