One of the greatest ironies of the operating room (OR) — where patients go for life-saving procedures — is its potential to also be one of the most dangerous, sometimes deadliest places inside a healthcare facility. Hazards of all types are waiting to happen to both patients and staff if proper safeguards aren’t always in place. For example, administering the wrong medication or dose, leaving foreign objects inside of patients, using faulty equipment, dirty equipment, missed recalls, needlestick and scalpel injuries, wrong site/patient/procedure errors, wearing the wrong PPE or not enough, accidental fires, surgical smokes inhalation … and that’s just the short list of what can go wrong.
Those and other complications are discussed continuously. Research is performed, articles and books are written, guidelines get updated, best practices are adopted, new technologies are developed, and clinicians try to do better.
What follows is a sampling of various solutions healthcare facilities can use to help prevent a variety of safety breaches. Healthcare Purchasing News asked these vendors two questions: How does your solution make a direct impact on improving OR safety and why is it a good investment for supply chain to consider? …
Accidental fires during laser procedures are another hazard for which solutions are available.
“The GloShield safety cap provides a protective covering for the end of the fiber optic light cable that can reach over 550 degrees Fahrenheit,” explained James K. Rains, PE, CEO, Jackson Medical. “GloShield is designed to prevent Never Events such as OR fires from occurring. This award-winning product is reliable and intuitive, making the hospital safer for patients and staff. GloShield is a simple way to mitigate the risk of ‘never events’ from occurring in the operating room. Of over one hundred first-time users, 94 percent thought that GloShield offers reliable protection and would reduce the risk of fires.”