Ellen E. Sullivan

Toward a better understanding of ASPAN: Its mission for 2000 and beyond

ASPAN is a provider and an approver of continuing education in nursing by the American Nurses Credentialing Centers (ANCC) Commission on Accreditation. The provider and approver sections are separate and distinct, and function independently of each other. The ASPAN Provider Committees provide numerous opportunities for perianesthesia continuing education and include the following: National Conference Committee, Seminars Committee, Workshops Committee, Clinical Practice Forums Committee, and Independent Studies Committee. The ASPAN Approver Committee consists of 17 teams that review and approve programs for contact hours.

How to Work Smarter, Not Harder: A Preoperative Tracking System

KEEPING TRACK OF 41 operating rooms (ORs) and more than 130 cases per day is a daunting task without the support of computerized systems. It can be quite challenging not to lose track of patients, miss a phone call, forget to write something down, or just run out of available space to place a patient. For a number of years now, we have benefited from an Operating Room Dynamic Schedule: a computerized program designed to track a patient’s progress throughout the procedure through the use of color coding. Different colors indicate various stages of surgery: patient in the room, incision, closing, surgery ended, room cleaned, and room ready. We then began to build off that program and developed a PACU Tracking System to track the progress of the postanesthesia patient in both the in-patient PACU, and the Phase I and Phase II ambulatory surgery unit. Recently, we went live with the implementation of the Preoperative Tracking System, designed to follow the progress of the preoperative patient from arrival to the hospital to entering the OR.

Preventing medical errors in the perianesthesia setting

THE INSTITUTE OF Medicine (IOM) published “To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System” in 1999. This startling report should cause all health care professionals to take a closer look at our practice, our standards, and our collaboration with colleagues so that we may strive to keep improving patient safety. The anesthesia profession has made significant strides over the last 2 decades at analyzing why errors occur, seeking ways to prevent them, standardizing equipment, and providing earlier detection systems to identify correctable problems. Perianesthesia nurses should evaluate their practice as well.