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Outpatient Surgery E-Weekly

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Archive >  Ambulatory Anesthesia 2006

Bringing the Heat

Our efforts to reduce surgical site infections ended up improving our patient warming protocol.

Pam Smith, MSN, CNOR

Our surgical team's quest to decrease incidences of hypothermia began in 2004 when my hospital participated in a national collaborative to reduce surgical site infections. Under the initiative, collaborative faculty identified six primary indicators for our facility to review for improvement. In the OR, we saw that lack of staff education and a tendency to warm reactively rather than prophylactically were likely causes of hypothermia in the PACU. With our sights on these targets, the OR set its goal: normothermia (36'C to 38'C) achieved in 95 percent of patients in PACU.

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