Caring for Surgical Patients With Piercings.

Body piercing, a type of body modification that is practiced in many cultures, creates an unnatural tract through tissue that is then held open by artificial means. Today, professional body piercing is often performed in piercing establishments that are subject to dissimilar forms of regulation. The most frequently reported medical complication of body piercing and similar body modifications, such as dermal implantation, is infection. Patients with piercings who undergo surgery may have additional risks for infection, electrical burns, trauma, or airway obstruction. The published research literature on piercing prevalence, complications, regulations, education, and nursing care is outdated. The purpose of this article is to educate nurses on topics related to nursing care for patients with piercings and similar body modifications, including the history, prevalence, motivations for, and perceptions of body piercings as well as possible complications, devices used, locations, healing times, regulations, patient education, and other health concerns.

Perioperative Care of Prisoners: Providing Safe Care.

Correctional nurses are trained to care for prisoners in a controlled security environment; however, when a convict is transferred to a noncorrectional health care facility, the nurses there are often unfamiliar with custody requirements or how to safely care for these patients. The care of prisoners outside of prison has not been adequately investigated, and a gap exists between research and nursing education and practice. Nurses rarely have to consider how providing care for a prisoner in custody affects their practice, the potential dissonance between routine nursing care and the requirements to maintain security, or that care of prisoners in unsecured clinical areas places the nurse and other personnel at risk for physical assault or prisoner escape. Educating perioperative nurses in the care of prisoners in a public hospital environment is important for the provision of safe care and prevention of physical and emotional repercussions to personnel.

Perioperative Care of the Transgender Patient.

Transgender patients are individuals whose gender identity is not related to their biological sex. Assuming a new gender identity that does not conform to societal norms often results in discrimination and barriers to health care. The exact number of transgender patients is unknown; however, these patients are increasingly seen in health care. Transgender individuals may experience provider-generated discrimination in health care facilities, including refusal of service, disrespect, and abuse, which contribute to depression and low self-esteem. Transgender therapies include mental health counseling for depression and low self-esteem, hormone therapy, and sex reassignment surgery. Health care professionals require cultural competence, an understanding of the different forms of patient identification, and adaptive approaches to care for transgender patients. VA (Veterans Affairs) hospitals provide a model for the care for transgender patients and staff.

Bone products in surgery: a blueprint for standardization.

Surgical facilities often stock many types of bone and bone products to meet the needs of multiple surgeons. In this era of cost containment, product standardization is necessary for the financial well-being of health care facilities. By familiarizing themselves with bone and bone product harvesting and processing and the US Food and Drug Administration requirements for approval of these products, perioperative nurses and managers can more easily standardize the bone and tissue products stocked and reduce costs. Steps toward standardization include establishing a multidisciplinary surgical product use committee to evaluate products used in the OR, limiting the number of tissue vendors for the facility to as few as possible, completing a product inventory to identify what is currently available, and constructing charts to share with surgeons that provide the rationales for standardizing products.

Management of exposure to waste anesthetic gases.

Anesthetic agents were developed in the 1700s, and nitrous oxide was first used in 1884. Research on the effects of waste anesthetic gas exposure started appearing in the literature in 1967. Short-term exposure causes lethargy and fatigue, and long-term exposure may be linked to spontaneous abortion, congenital abnormalities, infertility, premature births, cancer, and renal and hepatic disease. Today, perioperative staff members are exposed to trace amounts of waste anesthetic gas, and although this exposure cannot be eliminated, it can be controlled. Health care facilities are required to develop, implement, measure, and control practices to reduce anesthetic gas exposure to the lowest practical level. Exposure levels must be measured every six months and maintained at less than 25 parts per million for nitrous oxide and 2 parts per million for halogenated agents to be compliant with Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards.