Quality Improvements 2020

Quality/Risk Improvements 2020

By Bethany Dixon, BSN, RN, CNOR

Onboarding binders “Make It Easy” for new hires at Surgical Services and The Baby Place

Setting new team members up for success by making their onboarding and orientation process as easy as possible was my motivating factor for creating the New Hire Binders for Surgical Services.

Binders for each discipline in each department contain pertinent information, including the leadership structure within Surgical Services; dress codes, how to request time off; and how to access time sheets, paychecks and the AdventHealth Learning Network (ALN). The binder also houses new team member competencies, along with pages where the team members can take notes during their orientation.

Having the most important information in one place where each new team member can easily access it and refer to it helps “Make it Easy” for that person and their team.

“Keep Me Safe:” Innovation and education decrease risk of surgical site infections

Surgical site infections are costly and can lead to detrimental, long-term effects for the affected patient. That is why in late 2019, I started working with the clinical educator at BD – the manufacturer of Chloraprep – to see how we could improve our team member education and skin prepping techniques in the operating room. I worked with hospital leadership to arrange for BD to conduct a program onsite called Power in Prevention.

The program involved observations of surgical procedures followed by evidence-based solutions to help improve patient safety and processes in the operating room. As a result of this working relationship with BD, we brought in a product called the ClipVac, which helps eliminate 98.5% of hair and airborne contaminants when clipping a surgical patient’s hair. The use of this device helps decrease the potential for contamination from a patient’s hair or techniques previously used to clean up clipped hair.

AdventHealth Hendersonville also worked together with BD to provide prepping education to the operating room team to ensure manufacturers’ instructions for use were being followed on all skin prep solutions used at our organization. I provided the same education to nurses at The Baby Place to help ensure surgical areas throughout our entire organization are taking the measures necessary to decrease risk of infections.