Thinking in three's: Changing surgical patient safety practices in the complex modern operating room

The three surgical patient safety events, wrong site surgery, retained surgical items (RSI) and surgical fires are rare occurrences and thus their effects on the complex modern operating room (OR) are difficult to study. The likelihood of occurrence and the magnitude of risk for each of these surgical safety events are undefined. Many providers may never have a personal experience with one of these events and training and education on these topics are sparse. These circumstances lead to faulty thinking that a provider won't ever have an event or if one does occur the provider will intuitively know what to do. Surgeons are not preoccupied with failure and tend to usually consider good outcomes, which leads them to ignore or diminish the importance of implementing and following simple safety practices. These circumstances contribute to the persistent low level occurrence of these three events and to the difficulty in generating sufficient interest to resource solutions. Individual facilities rarely have the time or talent to understand these events and develop lasting solutions. More often than not, even the most well meaning internal review results in a new line to a policy and some rigorous enforcement mandate. This approach routinely fails and is another reason why these problems are so persistent. Vigilance actions alone havebeen unsuccessful so hospitals now have to take a systematic approach to implementing safer processes and providing the resources for surgeons and other stake-holders to optimize the OR environment. This article discusses standardized processes of care for mitigation of injury or outright prevention of wrong site surgery, RSI and surgical fires in an action-oriented framework illustrating the strategic elements important in each event and focusing on the responsibilities for each of the three major OR agents-anesthesiologists, surgeons and nurses. A Surgical Patient Safety Checklist is discussed that incorporates the necessary elements to bring these team members together and influence the emergence of a safer OR.

Establishment and implementation of safety check project for invasive procedures outside the operating room

Objective:This study aimed to describe the implementation of the surgical safety check policy and the surgical safety checklist for invasive procedures outside the operating room(OR)and evaluate its effectiveness.Methods:In 2017,to improve the safety of patients who underwent invasive procedures outside of the OR,the hospital quality and safety committee established the surgery safety check committee responsible for developing a new working plan,revise the surgery safety check policy,surgery safety check Keywords:Invasive procedures outside the operating room Safety management Surgical safety checklist Patient safety form,and provide training to the related staff,evaluated their competency,and implemented the updated surgical safety check policy and checklist.The study compared the data of pre-implementation(Apr to Sep 2017)and two post-implementation phases(Apr to Sep 2018,Apr to Sep 2019).It also evaluated the number of completed surgery safety checklist,correct signature,and correct timing of signature.Results:The results showed an increase in the completion rate of the safety checklist after the program implementation from 41.7%(521/1,249)to 90.4%(3,572/3,950),the correct rates of signature from 41.9%(218/521)to 99.0%(4,423/4,465),and the correct timing rates of signature from 34.4%(179/521)to 98.5%(4,401/4,465),with statistical significance(P<0.01).Conclusion:Implementing the updated surgery safety check significantly is a necessary and effective measure to ensure patient safety for those who underwent invasive procedures outside the OR.Implementing surgical safety checks roused up the clinical staff's compliance in performing safety checks,and enhanced team collaboration and communication.