Background: Medical equipment, supplies, and devices (ESD) serve a critical function in healthcare delivery how they can have patient safety consequences. ESD-related issues include malfunctions, physically missing ESDs, sterilization, usability. Describing from human factors perspective that focuses on user interactions with ESDs provide additional insights to address these issues. Methods: We...

There is an art and a science to determining the contents of an appropriate medical bag for sports and event medicine. Sports and event medicine encompass a broad range of activities and venues, and the medical bag's contents must be adapted accordingly. We discuss relevant considerations as well as general principles and recommendations accompanied by a checklist, using coverage of football ga...

Frontline care clinicians and staff in hospitals spend at least 10% of their time working around operational failures: situations in which information, supplies, or equipment needed for patient care are insufficient. However, little is known about underlying causes of operational failures and what hospitals can do to reduce their occurrence. To address this gap, we examined the internal supply ...

Faced with increased demands for critical care services as a result of the novel H1N1 pandemic, hospitals must prepare a surge response in an attempt to manage these needs. In preparing for a surge response, factors to consider are staff, stuff (supplies and equipment), space, and systems necessary to respond to the event. This article uses this general framework to discuss surge issues in the ...

OBJECTIVE This study explored factors that affect the adoption or rejection of evidence-based practice (EBP) changes and differences in nurse manager and staff nurse perceptions about those factors. BACKGROUND Roger's Diffusion of Innovations Theory explains relevant organizational strategies for guiding practice change. METHODS The primary author developed the Evidence-Based Practice Chang...

In recent years, researchers have developed an increasing awareness of the role of the environment in the development of health care-associated infections. AORN's "Recommended practices for environmental cleaning" is an evidence-based document that provides specific guidance for cleaning processes, for the selection of appropriate cleaning equipment and supplies, and for ongoing education and q...