Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.
Issue link: http://outpatientsurgery.uberflip.com/i/771120
ly pushed to increase case volumes or meet certain efficiency bench- marks can't focus fully on doing their jobs properly, says Ms. McWilliams. She suggests you explore ways to ease up on their daily workloads. Do you need to add more nurses? Would scheduling cases based on the realistic capabilities of your staff make a difference? "We've made great strides in changing the culture of surgery, but that needs to be continually brought up as an important factor in the prevention of surgical errors," says Ms. McWilliams. "That starts with administrators saying, 'We want to provide the safest possible care for our patients under the highest-quality working conditions for our staff.'" You can implement checklists and perform time outs, but errors will continue to occur if members of the surgical team aren't confident enough to speak up and don't have the respect of their peers when they walk into the OR, says Ms. McWilliams. "Until we recognize the importance of workplace culture," she says, "we're going to keep ignoring the elephant in the room." If it could (almost) happen to him … Bill Berry, MD, MPH, MPA, FACS, surgical consultant to the Risk Management Foundation of the Harvard Medical Institutions, recalls a time when human error almost put him in harm's way. He was in the office of his orthopedic surgeon the day before surgery to repair a bone in his left foot. After he signed the consent form, his wife tugged on his sleeve and said, "You just consented for surgery on your right foot." 1 2 4 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • J a n u a r y 2 0 1 7 "There are problems embedded in the systems of surgical care, not in the people who are performing it." — Bill Berry, MD, MPH, MPA, FACS SURGICAL ERRORS