Together We Can Save Lives Through Early Detection
AORN 2009 Blog
Tuesday, March 17
AORN's annual Congress is the world's premier educational event and tradeshow addressing the needs of perioperative nurses. Nearly 7,000 perioperative nurses and nurse managers gather each year to enhance their knowledge and skills, meet with industry, and keep up-to-date with the latest in recommended practices, hot topics, products and services.
This year, Medline is in booth #2044. Please stop by and visit us!
As many of you know, each year we issue a doll that features a specialty in the field of nursing. We are introducing the newest addition to our Medline doll collection, SCIP, combat nurse. SCIP is the 7th doll in the collection, and honors those who are caring for the men and women who protect our country. And, as you might have guessed, his name shows that he is a proud supporter of national patient safety efforts, including the Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP).
Medline joined the SCIP in October 2006 to work with hospitals and other healthcare providers to make surgery safer across the country. SCIP is a national quality partnership of organization focused on improving surgical care by significantly reducing surgical complications. It is a unique partnership that is proving to be a transformational undertaking in health care. The SCIP goal is to reduce the incidence of surgical complications nationally by 25 percent by the year 2010.
Nurses will get a SCIP doll after they have visited three stations at the Medline booth. Hold these tight … these are always very popular.
We have our Sterillium Rub in the booth because hand hygiene is always a huge topic at AORN. While there are a number of simple things that can be done to encourage infection prevention within the perioperative area, perioperative personnel are now beginning to realize it’s just as important to maintain asepsis when they’re prepping or preparing the sterile field or performing other basic tasks for the patient in the perioperative setting. A significant factor is the realization that hand hygiene is the single most important procedure in preventing the spread of infections. You can read AORN’s recommended practices for surgical hand antisepsis/hand scrubs here.
Sterillium’s well-balanced emollient blend leaves hands feeling soft and smooth, not greasy or sticky, and it dries quickly and leaves no buildup, allowing quicker, easier gloving. An important fact about Sterillium Rub is that it is the only product formulated with 80% ethanol to achieve superior bactericidal activity. This is key, because there has been a lot of debate recently about the efficacy of lower alcohol content hand rubs. You can view studies on this issue here (at the bottom of the page).
