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F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 4 | O U T P AT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E
But I mark every site that I operate on with my initials, so that I have
to cut my initials to get the surgery done."
And of course he uses ink that won't wash off with skin prep.
That's the best approach, says Mr. Byrum: "I really believe with all my
heart that the surgeon's initials at the site of the surgical procedure, or as
near as physically possible, is one of the single best ways to ensure that
the surgeon is engaged, knows the site, and that the whole staff is
engaged and in agreement."
The fact that many facilities still haven't instituted that rule is some-
thing Mr. Byrum has trouble wrapping his head around. "Asking people
to use different markings and different conventions is like having no
agreement on what a stop sign should look like," he says. "If you don't
have consistency in the way it's done, and everybody does something a
little different, the
probability of recog-
nizing a stop sign goes
down. Why wouldn't
you settle on a consis-
tent marking conven-
tion that everybody
knows, everybody
agrees to and every-
body does every
time?"
Only human
Why indeed? "There's
a lot of pushback on
standardization
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