Wrong-Site Surgery: A Case Study

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According to the Journal of Patient Safety, “Between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who got to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death.” Doctors are not perfect, but with some of the harms being preventable they should pay greater attention to what they are doing. To help prevent harm that could have been prevented they could check they have the right patient, double check they give the right medicine, and they could wash their hands. Doctors and nurses should check the body part of the person they are planning on operating on to make sure they are doing the right procedure on the right body part. According to Joint Commission “wrong-site surgery occurs 40 times a week in U.S. hospitals and clinics.” That makes 1,920 wrong-site surgeries per year. Amputation of the wrong body part has caused many to live without either their arms or legs when they could have had only one side amputated. For example, when Bill (last name is not given) had to have his left leg amputated after a car accident the x-ray technician mixed left for right and had both his legs amputated. According to archive.riskreviewonline.com, 76% of wrong-site surgery happens from the lack of procedural compliance. A checklist, as recommended by Atul …show more content…

Doctors and nurses should be more careful with the simple things because those are the things that could end up saving lives. Washing hands, for example, saved thousands of lives. Paying attention to medicines given can easily be prevented by checking over the patient’s condition and which medicine is made for the disease. Patients getting the wrong side amputated is also a medical mistake that can be easily prevented by paying a little more attention. Simply giving all the attention needed could save so many lives everywhere in the medical

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