TIME OUT DURING SURGERY PROFESSIONAL

TIME OUT DURING SURGERY PROFESSIONAL

Clearly, the surgeon, the staff, and the hospital would have had professional liability exposure for malpractice. The consequences of such an error would impact the patient and his family, the surgeon, the staff, and the hospital itself. The phrase 'or the risk thereof' includes any process variation for which a recurrence would carry a significant chance of a serious adverse outcome. Serious injury specifically includes loss of limb or function. This was a last-minute near miss that could have resulted in a sentinel event, with adverse consequences for all involved.Ī sentinel event is an unexpected occurrence involving death or serious physical or psychological injury, or the risk thereof. The next step was to review the radiographs that were on the view box that is when it was discovered that someone had hung the radiograph upside down. She said, 'The schedule says, 'RIGHT' as does the informed consent, but the patient is positioned with the left side up.' Everything stopped. The nurse felt her heart pounding faster and harder and yelled, 'STOP!' The schedule and surgical consent were then quickly rechecked by the circulating nurse, and both confirmed that right-sided surgery was to be performed. She checked the surgical schedule, which confirmed a right-sided procedure, but while looking at the patient, she realized that the patient was draped and positioned revealing his left side. While the scrub nurse was rechecking the setup, she had a strong intuition about verifying the surgical site. The patient was scheduled for a right-sided procedure and the team had started to prepare the patient for surgery. When the relief person arrived, the OR was already set up and the patient was positioned and had been intubated for surgery. It all started when the nurse came into the OR to relieve the scrub person for lunch. This is a true story that occurred in an operating room (OR) while visiting a hospital outside of New York City, before 'time-out' was implemented. Wrong-site surgery can have devastating consequences for the patient and a negative impact on the entire surgical team ( Kwan, 2006). Today, as professionals in the health care environment, the phrase 'time-out' is used to prevent patient harm and near misses. When one hears the phrase 'time-out,' it takes us back to our childhood when these words were used as a discipline technique by many parents or a sporting event where there is a pause in the action.

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Time out during surgery