Surgical news [January 1972]

              SURC-ICAL NEI-'S
January    19/2
The Medical  Board mot on Monday night, January 17,  1972,    The building plans  for the
hospital have been painstakingly slow - recently hampered by a change in the architects
commitments.    These plans for the time being are in limbo, however, definitive action is
underway to absolutely utilize and finalize all the plans that have been developed over the
years concerning the expansion.    Some of the original concepts have to be redesigned and
altered to meet constantly changing requirements.    There may be financial revisions  in order
to cope with the staggering escalating construction costs.    I hope we can count on your continued patience and support as this huge project finally takes form.    The plans for the
Operating Room will be finished after the Ambulatory Care Facility is arranged.    Although
an overhead observation deck is not included in our present plans,   I  feel that this will he
a necessity,  especially  for the future.    More and more people are in the operating rooms,  in
one official capacity or another,  such as students,  technicians and so forth.    This only increases the chances for infection and reduces the efficiency of the operating room personnel.
Also, we should seriously investigate one or more laminar flow operating rooms.    The basic
work on  laminar flow rooms provided a highly protected environment for medical  applications,
but recently has been expanded to include the Operating Room,    This method seems a promising
means   to prevent exogenous infection, along with high-efficiency filtration.    These new
Systems now have the advantage of portability,  in that the entire system can be set up or
dismantled in a day,  and modularity, which permits  adaptation to various room sizes.
We feel fortunate in that Dr. Sherweod Barefoot will be the president of the Medical
Board beginning July 1,  1972.    Also,  at the Medical Board meeting Dr.  John Dilworth was
advanced to the Active Surgical Staff.    As you know, we only have one annual Full Staff
meeting.    As president of the Medical Board,  I am having various committees report periodically
to the Mjdical Board to discuss what interim problems they have and what help we can possibly
give them.    Although deleting our regular Full Staff meetings was  good news to most of us,  it
certainly has  increased the communications problem.     In having the committee reports, the
Chiefs of the services  then can take this information to their own service.
On Wednesday,  February 16,   1972,  at our Monthly Surgical Conference,  the entiM program
will be for the purpose of discussing hospital infections and specifically the Operating Room.