By Esther Espunyes, EORNA President

Last week, I reflected on the importance of anticipating risk and learning from errors, near misses and sentinel events. But prevention and improvement require something more: we need to know whether our actions are actually making a difference.

Quality in perioperative nursing cannot be based on perception alone. What we measure matters, because meaningful indicators allow us to identify variation, recognise risks, evaluate outcomes and understand where improvement is needed.

Perioperative nursing contributes to many dimensions of quality and efficiency: surgical site infections, hypothermia, pressure injuries, surgical counts, medication and specimen management, patient experience, unplanned returns to the operating room, cancellations, first-case start times, turnover times and the efficiency of the daily operating schedule, as well as compliance with evidence-based practices.

This is where quality teams and perioperative nurses must work together. Quality professionals bring expertise in measurement, data analysis, benchmarking and improvement methodologies. Perioperative nurses bring high-value clinical knowledge, a deep understanding of the surgical pathway and direct insight into what happens at the point of care. This places them in a unique position not only to identify opportunities for improvement, but also to lead and implement quality improvement interventions that are clinically relevant, measurable and sustainable.

Indicators should never become simply another dashboard or a tool for blame. Their purpose is to learn, improve, optimise resources and make care safer and more efficient.

When we measure what matters, we make quality visible. And when quality becomes visible, perioperative nurses can lead meaningful change.

Next week, I will reflect on how we can transform what goes wrong into an opportunity for learning and improvement—and why every adverse event should help us build safer systems and safer practice.