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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 | D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 5
Before and after surgery
Our first real, legitimate pause actually comes one week before the
surgery, not on the day of surgery. We meet as a team to discuss the
patients scheduled for the following week, review the checklist, and
look for any highlighted items we need to remember or address.
S A F E T Y
IT'S ALIVE
Tailor the Checklist to Reflect Your Specialty
Maybe the best part
about our comprehensive
Operating Room Checklist
is that it's designed to be
a living, breathing docu-
ment. Nothing is written
in stone. My guess is that
probably about 90% of it
would apply to any sur-
geon and any surgery, but
the other 10% can easily be customized and applied to any specialty. And it can
be continually updated.
Several years ago, one of my patients had a MRSA infection during a facelift. I never
want to see one of those again, so I talked to a friend who specializes in infectious
diseases and we came up with a protocol to add to the checklist. A thousand cases
later, we haven't had another.
Preventable complications are practically nonexistent in my practice, and that's
because if we ever have a technical or procedural problem in the OR, we immediate-
ly update the protocol so it won't happen again.
— Lorne King Rosenfield, MD
Download Dr. Rosenfield's Operating Room Checklist at outpatientsurgery.net/forms.
z BARE-BONES? The World Health Organization sur-
gical checklist has its limitations, says Dr. Rosenfield.