Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Special Outpatient Surgery Edition - Megatrends - January 2018

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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going to shine a light on 3 of them: unsafe injection practices, unsanitary anesthesia providers and unseen residual debris on reprocessed instru- ments. Can we end cross-contamination? Probably not, but you can shoot for zero healthcare infections. 1. Unsafe injection practices Bacterial and bloodborne infections from unsafe injection practices are entirely preventable, but misconceptions about safe injection practices abound, says Libby Chinnes, RN, BSN, CIC, FAPIC, an infec- tion prevention and control consultant in Mt. Pleasant, S.C. She says it's not OK to: • administer medication in the same syringe to more than one patient so long as they change the needle between patients or admin- ister the injection through a length of IV tubing. • access the same medication vial for more than one patient with a syringe that has already been used to administer medication to a patient. • use a common bag of IV fluid or saline for more than one patient and to access the bag with a syringe you already used to flush the catheter of a patient. • use medications packaged as single-use for more than one patient. • keep multi-dose vials in immediate patient care areas, including operating and procedure rooms, anesthesia and procedure carts, and patient rooms or bays. Those are the don'ts. Ms. Chinnes offers these do's for safe injection practices. • To access patient medications in an aseptic manner, use a new sterile needle as well as a new sterile syringe to draw up medications while preventing contact between the injectable materials and the 2 8 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8

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