CS professionals should celebrate Perioperative Nurse Week
International Central Service Week and International Infection Prevention Week were both celebrated in October and hopefully, professionals from both groups honored the other during their respective weeks. But there’s more to celebrate in November as surgical nurses gear up for Perioperative Nurse Week November 6-12, 2016 — and CS professionals should be front and center in honoring these interdisciplinary teammates.
The International Association of Healthcare Central Service Materiel Management (IAHCSMM) has long encouraged CS professionals of all titles and tenures to reach beyond the walls of their department and build and nurture effective partnerships with Operating Room (OR) professionals and infection preventionists. Each discipline’s dedicated week of honor provides a golden opportunity to do just that. The OR relies on CS all day, every day, to provide properly-maintained and -reprocessed instruments that help meet the needs of every patient. CS professionals’ commitment to current standards, best practices and manufacturers’ instructions for use also plays a direct role in infection prevention and other positive patient outcomes. Conversely, OR professionals help serve CS by effectively managing instruments at the point of use, transporting them safely and effectively, and delivering them back to the decontamination area in a timely fashion to allow for easier cleaning and reprocessing. Each of these departments also share the common goal of providing the best patient care possible, preventing infections and ensuring positive patient outcomes.
Building effective professional partnerships across these three disciplines is essential and it’s a quest that should last all year in the name of quality, respect and patient safety. Taking time out of a busy schedule to honor interdisciplinary colleagues during their celebratory weeks (and beyond) sets the stage for enduring support and more effective teamwork and collaboration.
Small gestures, big rewards
There are many ways CS professionals can show appreciation and respect for their OR nurse teammates in November, and the gestures needn’t be grand to be beneficial and garner appreciation.
“It can be as small as giving a card signed by the entire staff,” said Rose Seavey, MBA, BS, RN, CNOR, CRCST, CSPDT, President/CEO of Seavey Healthcare Consulting and former SPD director at The Children’s Hospital of Denver. “Small acts of kindness and recognition can go a long way in forming a bond and feeling appreciated.”
Delivering baked goods or creating a gratitude poster that highlights the ways OR professionals positively impact CS is another way to honor the OR team. CS professionals can also build camaraderie with the OR by initiating a brainstorming session on how CS and OR can promote information sharing and interdisciplinary involvement during Perioperative Nurse Week activities. This could involve co-creating educational games, offering to help decorate or bring snacks, refreshments or other items to aid the celebration, and having CS employees from all shifts attend at least one event during Perioperative Nurse Week.
The dedicated week can also serve as a perfect backdrop for CS professionals to provide a brief instrumentation- or sterilization-related inservice for the OR staff. This is a particularly effective way for CS technicians with more advanced skills, such as Certified Instrument Specialists, to share their knowledge and build a more productive relationship with the perioperative team.
When Perioperative Nurse Week draws to a close, CS professionals can perpetuate the good will by stepping up their customer service commitment. One effective approach is to ask OR nurses if they have any instrumentation-related questions that need addressing — and then provide concise, typewritten answers to their questions. It is also beneficial to routinely inquire if the OR team is experiencing any instrumentation challenges (e.g., malfunctioning devices, incomplete sets, excessive repair requests, etc.), for example. If so, steps can be taken to work directly with the nurses (and surgeons) to create a mutually acceptable resolution. If there is a challenging vendor-related issue, CS professionals can offer to arrange a vendor inservice for additional clarification and education. Additionally, OR nurses can be encouraged to speak directly with CS staff (in person) to help educate about a particular instrumentation-related issue that presents a challenge in the OR.
Every week, not just the seven days set aside to honor a particular profession, can serve as an opportune time for healthcare professionals to learn from one another and work together to improve teamwork and collaboration, and partner for quality in the long term. Any program or initiative that promotes positive interdisciplinary communication will pay big dividends. Establishing a CS and OR liaison to keep the lines of communication open between the two departments is one strategy many facilities have found effective, as is implementing an employee “shadowing” program where every employee in CS and OR spends a day in the other’s department to see firsthand what takes place behind the scenes. Regularly participating in one another’s daily or weekly meetings or “team huddles” is another way to gain a better understanding of a department’s key issues, challenges and priorities. This, in turn, can promote improved understanding and problem solving.
“Allowing members from both departments to work on problems together is also a great way to develop respect and trust as they work on common goals and projects that impact both departments,” noted Lisa Spence, DNP, RN, CNSCP, CNOR, ACNS, ACNP, FAAN, Director of Evidence-Based Perioperative Practice for the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN).
