Perioperative nurses play an instrumental role in ensuring patient safety, infection control, and quality improvement within health care settings. Their unique and adept skills significantly enhance surgical outcomes, particularly in complex, high-risk procedures. We take this opportunity to applaud their efforts in conjunction with Perioperative Nurses Week (November 10-16, 2024), a period dedicated by the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) to honor these healthcare professionals.
AORN President, Nakeisha Tolliver, and CEO, Linda Groah, encourage all health systems to acknowledge the irreplaceable contributions of these nursing professionals. Their domain-specific, clinical knowledge and their skills are the key protectors against adverse patient outcomes, boosting not only patient health but also contributing to hospital revenues. Managing surgical services is an intricate task, requiring much more than just resources.
Perioperative nurses excel in providing safe care during one of the most critical phases of a patient’s life. They are skilled at understanding and navigating the myriad of intersecting factors necessary for patient wellbeing, while mitigating financial risks for the hospital. Recognizing these unique abilities, both The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and The Joint Commission mandate supervision in the operating room from individuals with specialized perioperative experience.
AORN firmly believes perioperative nurses fit perfectly in the role of surgical services director, bringing their invaluable experiences to the table. For those professionals lacking direct perioperative experience, AORN offers its steadfast support to foster balanced decision-making processes, improving care efficiencies.
The article also brings to light several other pertinent issues and strategies in infection prevention and control, including improvements in oral care protocols to reduce rates of non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia (NV-HAP), the role of a 3-dimensional approach to infection control, strategies to tackle the healthcare workforce shortage, outsourcing of environmental hygiene in healthcare, the importance of rapid diagnostics in antibiotic stewardship, and more. Readers are also encouraged to participate in APIC Chapter Conferences for the rest of 2024 and 2025.