Brain Drain in the Operating Room

It's time we talk about a very troubling trend that is rising across the country, and will continue to grow through 2023 and beyond; the steady drop of Institutional Knowledge in O.R.s across this country.

The O.R. is where the most important Institutional Knowledge is found. In today's surgical world, the intellectual firepower of your hospital (and ASC) is centered in the O.R. So what happens when your best and brightest nurses become burned out, leave for travel nursing positions or retire altogether? It's a Brain Drain that can have a serious impact on your facility's bottom line. Not to mention, a nurse was recently convicted of manslaughter for mistakenly giving the wrong medication to a patient. But there are ways to combat this Brain Drain. In this post, we'll discuss some strategies for keeping your Institutional Knowledge strong - so you don't become another hospital statistic. Read on to learn more!

When I use the term “Brain Drain”, I’m referring to the loss of Institutional Knowledge that is happening in O.R.s all across the country. There are fewer and fewer people in your facility that know exactly how things are supposed to run in your O.R.s.

There are 4 primary factors for this Brain Drain:

1. New Nurses entering the industry at record levels to try to combat the nurse shortage.
2. Nurses leaving their facilities for Travel Nursing positions (at all-time record numbers)
3. Travel Nurses coming in to new facilities where they've never worked before (see #2).
4. Lack of accurate documentation of a facility's processes & procedures.

Here are a few important statistics that highlight these trends:

All of these factors are combining to make it very difficult to retain your facility's Institutional Knowledge (how your top surgeons want rooms setup, for example).

You must find a way to get your Institutional Knowledge out of the brains of your employees, and documented into platforms that you own and control. If not, you are at risk of losing that Institutional Knowledge to retirement, burnout or employees moving on.         

As the CEO of a technology company designed to help standardize processes in the O.R., I'm constantly meeting with surgical teams across the country who are trying to combat these trends. But it is not easy, especially since EHRs fail tremendously at bringing clarity to the O.R.

Here's one example:

Imagine you're a new nurse (either brand new or a travel nurse at a new facility) and you're tasked with helping in the O.R.

The "recipe" card for how a room should be setup for a specific procedure by a specific surgeon generally looks like one of these two options...

Paper Cards

or cards from an EHR...

Neither one is very helpful in ensuring that the room is going to be setup correctly. It's basically impossible to do with these cards unless you've worked with that surgeon a hundred times before.

In contrast, here's a better way...

There is no question how this surgeon wants things setup...it's right there in black and white (and color!).

A picture really is worth a thousand words        

That is just one example of a way to keep your Institutional Knowledge intact.

The preference card is the perfect place to start, but there are ways all over your O.R. that you can start preparing for the tidal wave of new nurses coming into your facility. If you don't have your systems clearly documented, you're in for a world of hurt in the years to come.