Wrong-site surgeries being studied in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Posted on Feb 09, 2009
It's time out in surgery, as hospitals watch doctors by Minneapolis Star Tribune writer Marua Lerner –
This article discusses the use of a “Time-out Towel”.
We aren’t changing the oil in a car, its surgery; we are operating on a human body. So why do wrong-site surgeries persist? With all the attention devoted to wrong-patient or wrong-procedure surgeries why are they continuing to occur? What is going on in the operating room that allows the patient to be put at risk?
“Since 2003, 150 surgical mix-ups have been reported throughout Minnesota, including 97 operations on the wrong body part and nine on the wrong patient, according to a recent report from the state health department. Although rare, these headline-grabbing episodes are just a slice of a broader problem of hospital medical errors that affect thousands of patients nationally every year.
So hospital officials are experimenting with new ways to prevent mistakes. One of them is as simple as a cloth.”
The writer discusses the problem of wrong-site, wrong-patient and wrong-procedure; and why, in most instances, the time-out doesn’t work. The hospital studied surgeries and why this surgical safety procedure didn’t work. It’s a good article and Iowa’s hospital officials would be smart to follow suit and study surgical teams and how they are performing or not performing the time-out procedure.
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