Risk Manager

Nature of the Risk

A surgical time-out is a critical safety checklist in operating rooms before surgery is carried out (Röhsig et al., 2020). The reported failure of the head surgeon to conduct a surgical time out before proceeding with surgery can be termed as a never event in surgery. Never events in surgery are serious risks to healthcare with an impact on patient safety (Schwendimann et al., 2019). Never events in surgery can occur as surgical operations on the wrong side and site of the body.

Who is at Risk?

Patients are directly affected with a risk of death, serious injuries, and extra medical costs. Health organizations and practitioners risk penalties and loss of practicing licensure. Even though the surgery did not result in harm or cause injury to the patient, such a failure is still a healthcare risk of concern.

Additional Information Required and Action to Prevent Recurrence of Incidence

Risk and quality management professionals within healthcare settings are key facilitators of patient safety nationally (Youngberg, 2010). It is the duty of the hospital’s risk manager to collect enough information on cases such as the never event during the surgery and develop methods to prevent the occurrence of such risks in the future. Although the surgeon denies such an incident occurs, the risk manager will require logs before and after the surgical event, talk to people who were present in the operation room, and information about the environment within the operation team before the surgery, including team and individual moods and attitudes among the participants in the room. To better prevent the recurrence of the incident, the risk manager will educate the head surgeon on their role as a team leader of the surgical team. The risk manager will need to introduce checks and balances to ensure that all surgical team members are involved in surgical time-outs and verify that all surgical team members agree with the results of the time-out before carrying out the surgery. There is also a need to have a clear plan for surgeries to ensure that the surgical team is not overloaded with surgical caseloads.

References

Röhsig, V., Maestri, R. N., Mutlaq, M. F. P., de Souza, A. B., Seabra, A., Farias, E. R., & Lorenzini, E. (2020). Quality improvement strategy to enhance compliance with the World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist in a large hospital: Quality improvement study. Annals of Medicine and Surgery, 55, 19-23.

Schwendimann, R., Blatter, C., Lüthy, M., Mohr, G., Girard, T., Batzer, S., … & Hoffmann, H. (2019). Adherence to the WHO surgical safety checklist: an observational study in a Swiss academic center. Patient safety in surgery, 13(1), 1-6.

Youngberg, B. J. (2010). Principles of risk management and patient safety.

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You are the risk manager of a hospital. A nurse from the operating room reports that, during surgery, the head surgeon did not conduct a “time out” to confirm the side and site of the surgery. You question the surgeon, and he denies the incident. There is no injury to the patient.

Risk Manager

What is the nature of the risk? Who is at risk? What additional information do you require? What actions can be taken to prevent the recurrence of the incident?

To support your work, use your course and textbook readings and also use the South University Online Library. As in all assignments, cite your sources in your work and provide references for the citations in APA format.

Your initial posting should be addressed at 300-500 words. Submit your document to this Discussion Area by the due date assigned. Be sure to cite your sources using APA format.