Getting surgical errors to zero

In the United States, hospitals and organizations find ways to help prevent events that should rarely or never occur, often called Never Events. The list of Never Events is made in order to provide hospitals with incentives to make sure the occurrences of them are reduced. As Mrs. Friend states, “If revenue decreases in our health care facilities because of “Never events” this could impact nursing in many ways. The rate of pay, staff to patient ration, availability of modern medical equipment, and our health insurance premiums will all be affected” (Friend, 2009, p. 5). One major type of Never Event that happens more often than it should is a surgical never event. Although, the occurrences of surgical Never Events may not be out of control, we must take into account that they are only reported if they are discovered. In today’s society the occurrence of Never Events should be virtually zero because of the technology available to prevent them.

Surgical Never Events can happen very easily if procedures to prevent them are not used. Surgical Never Events include foreign objects left inside the patient, wrong site surgery, and performing the wrong surgery on a patient. “There were 148 surgical never events in England between April and September 2013, including one woman who had a fallopian tube removed instead of her appendix” (Nursing Standard, 2014, p.10). It is crucial for these surgical errors to never happen because they are often never caught and can potentially result in a fatality. When patients do not have complications in a reasonable amount of time after surgery the errors are often never found because when they start to cause an issue it is often too late.

It is crucial for workplaces to enforce preventative procedures i...

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...hould publish data on serious incidents for independent review” (Nursing Standard, 2014, p.10). In order to fully decrease the amount of never events occurring staff members need to be fully trained on how to properly use checklists, how to prepare for a surgery, and how to conclude a surgery. These trainings will stress the necessity of using checklists, and because of it most Never Events that transpire will only be serious occurrences.

Over time the occurrences of surgical Never Events has decreased with the help of checklists and other procedures implemented in the work place.

Works Cited

Friend, D. (2009). “Never Events” in healthcare: SB 435/HB 758. Maryland Nurse, 10(3), 5.

Serious ‘never events’ listed in new bid to eliminate them. (2014). Nursing Standard, 28(27), 10.

Sirounian, G. (2014). AAOS now. Using Checklists To Ensure Patient Safety. 8(3), 1.