The Surgical clinics of North America
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Surg. Clin. North Am. · Feb 2012
ReviewHigh reliability organizations and surgical microsystems: re-engineering surgical care.
Error prevention and mitigation is the primary goal in high-risk health care, particularly in areas such as surgery. There is growing consensus that significant improvement is hard to come by as a result of the vast complexity and inefficient processes of the health care system. Recommendations and innovations that focus on individual processes do not address the larger and often intangible systemic and cultural factors that create vulnerabilities throughout the entire system. This article introduces basic concepts of complexity and systems theory that are useful in redesigning the surgical work environment to create safety, quality, and reliability in surgical care.
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A human factors model is used to highlight the nature of many systems factors that affect surgical performance, including the OR environment, teamwork and communication, technology and equipment, tasks and workload factors, and organizational variables. If further improvements in the success rate and reliability of cardiac surgery are to be realized, interventions need to be developed to reduce the negative impact that work system failures can have on surgical performance. Some recommendations are proposed here; however, several challenges remain.
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Surg. Clin. North Am. · Feb 2012
ReviewOpen disclosure of adverse events: transparency and safety in health care.
Many patients suffering adverse events in health care turn to the legal system to learn what happened to them and to seek compensation. Health care providers have ethical, professional, and legal duties to disclose the harmful effects of care to the patient, regardless of how small the risk. The purpose of open disclosure is to explain what happened to the patient and to seek a just outcome for patient and provider. This article explores our experience of managing and implementing an open disclosure program in an acute and chronic tertiary care facility with university affiliation in the Veterans Health Administration.
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Advances in health information technology provide significant opportunities for improvements in surgical patient safety. The adoption and use of electronic health records can enhance communication along the surgical spectrum of care. ⋯ Computerized intraoperative monitoring systems can improve the performance of the operating room team. Automated data registries collect patient information to be analyzed and used for surgical quality improvement.
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Health-acquired infection (HAI) is defined as a localized or systemic condition resulting from an adverse reaction to the presence of infectious agents or its toxins. This article focuses on HAIs that are well studied, common, and costly (direct, indirect, and intangible). The HAIs reviewed are catheter-related bloodstream infection, ventilator-associated pneumonia, surgical site infection, and catheter-associated urinary tract infection. This article excludes discussion of Clostridium difficile infections and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus.