Premium
Reducing OR Traffic Using Education, Policy Development, and Communication Technology
Author(s) -
Esser Jennifer,
Shrinski Keonemana,
Cady Rhonda,
Belew John
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
aorn journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.222
H-Index - 43
eISSN - 1878-0369
pISSN - 0001-2092
DOI - 10.1016/j.aorn.2015.10.022
Subject(s) - intervention (counseling) , medicine , surgical team , quality (philosophy) , quality management , surgical site infection , medical emergency , operations management , medical education , nursing , engineering , surgery , management system , philosophy , epistemology
A bundled approach to surgical site infection (SSI) prevention strategies includes reducing OR traffic. A nurse‐led quality improvement (QI) team sought to reduce OR traffic through education and a process change that included wireless communication technology and policy development. The team measured OR traffic by counting the frequency of door openings per hour in seven surgical suites during 305 surgical procedures conducted during similar 22‐week periods before and after the QI project intervention. Door openings decreased significantly ( P < 0.05) from an average of 37.8 per hour to 32.8 per hour after the QI project intervention. This suggests that our multifaceted approach reduces OR traffic. The next steps of this project include analyzing automatically captured video to understand OR traffic patterns and expanding education to departments and external personnel frequently present in our surgical suites. Future research evaluating the effectiveness of this OR traffic initiative on SSI incidence is recommended.