Surgical innovation
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Surgical innovation · Jun 2007
Surgical robotics for patient safety in the perioperative environment: realizing the promise.
Surgery is at a crossroads of complexity. However, there is a potential path toward patient safety. One such course is to leverage computer and robotic assist techniques in the reduction and interception of error in the perioperative environment. ⋯ The paper will briefly review the current status of surgical robotics and summarize any conclusions that can be reached to date based on existing research. It will then lay out a roadmap for future research to determine how surgical robots should be optimally designed and integrated into the perioperative workflow and process. Successful movement down this path would involve focused efforts and multiagency collaboration to address the research priorities outlined, thereby realizing the full potential of surgical robotics to augment human capabilities, enhance task performance, extend the reach of surgical care, improve health care quality, and ultimately enhance patient safety.
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Surgical innovation · Jun 2007
Improving operating room and perioperative safety: background and specific recommendations.
The 1999 Institute of Medicine report To Err Is Human put a spotlight on death from preventable medical errors. Surgically related errors are second only to medication errors as the most frequent cause of error-related death. Although many hospitals have ongoing programs to improve medication safety, most hospitals are not focused in a meaningful way on operating room (OR) safety despite the import of the OR to the hospital's finances and despite clearly efficacious available technologies. ⋯ Actual adverse events are relatively rare in any given OR suite, but near misses are rather common. It is possible to learn much from evaluating near misses (along with adverse events) with root-cause analyses and then instituting changes in processes and systems to assist humans from making their inevitable errors. This article outlines approaches that when combined can markedly improve safety in the OR.