employee's eye.
• Hit head on open cabinet.
• Cut by an instrument.
Not much you can do to prevent those types of injuries, but here's
some advice on keeping your staff safe, starting with surgical smoke.
1. Smoke evacuation. What good is a smoke evacuator if your
team doesn't use it? That's the problem Terri Foster, BSN, RN, CNOR,
the surgical services educator at Allegiance Health in Jackson, Mich.,
recently was up against. Smoke evacuators were being used in less
than one-third of cases.
"The initial barriers included the bulkiness of the tool and the loud-
ness of the machine in operation," says Ms. Foster. "The biggest thing
surgeons wanted was something that wasn't going to be in the way.
Noise was the other consistent objection."
The solution: an evacuator that activates automatically. An accesso-
ry that connects between the electrocautery machine and the smoke
evacuator device triggers the evacuation to turn on when the cautery
pencil is in use and to shut off when it's not in use.
2. Safety sharps. Chances are you've witnessed a sharps injury, or
may have even been sliced or stuck yourself, and know firsthand the
deep emotional and physical scars the injuries can cause. Safety
scalpels would reduce the potential for injury to surgical team mem-
bers, but surgeons are notoriously reluctant to use them.
You can remind your surgeons that they aren't the only ones at risk
of being cut, says Ron Stoker, founder and executive director of the
International Sharps Injury Prevention Society in Salt Lake City, Utah.
You can also tell your reticent docs that they don't have a choice in
the matter. OSHA's bloodborne pathogen standard requires you to
conduct annual evaluations of sharps safety devices.
9 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 • M a r c h 2 0 1 7
