Hospital Checklist for Patient Safety

In most cases, doctors, nurses and other hospital employees take every precaution to make sure a patient’s surgery goes smoothly and does cause any additional problems. However, in some cases, mistakes are made due to negligence or lack of communication and complications arise during surgical procedures. Thankfully, a new checklist, which will obligate doctors and nurses to make absolutely sure that every step of a procedure has been completed carefully, will become mandatory in New York’s city-run hospitals at the start of 2009. Six of the 11 city-run hospitals, including Coney Island Hospital, Kings County Hospital, North Central Bronx Hospital, Jacobi Medical Center, Lincoln Hospital and Elmhurst Hospital Center, are the first in the U.S. to use the Surgical Safety Checklist. Those Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens medical centers adopted the new policy this past August in their operating rooms, making a conscious effort to prevent mistakes during surgery and increase communication before, during and after the procedure.

This new checklist, which was introduced to the six initial hospitals by the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation, includes three categories that prompt surgeons and nurses to check before the induction of anesthesia, before skin incision and before the patient leaves the operating room. The lists include items such as making sure surgical sponges and other instruments are removed before incisions are closed, verifying any patient allergies and having all surgical team members introduce themselves and state their role before the procedure begins.

The Surgical Safety Checklist was created by the World Health Organization and is being used as a part of the patient-safety initiative at the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation to make hospitals safer and allow less of a possibility for mistakes. So far, the safety guidelines have reduced procedure-caused infections by 55 percent and ventilator-caused infections by 78 percent.

Mistakes do happen and it is almost impossible to reduce all risk, so it is important to know if a doctor or hospital caused additional harm when a patient has had a procedure or treatment. If you or a loved one has any questions, please contact the hospital and physician medical malpractice attorneys at Silberstein, Awad & Miklos, serving clients with Nassau and Suffolk County medical malpractice, Brooklyn medical malpractice, Bronx medical malpractice and Queens medical malpractice cases. Silberstein, Awad & Miklos also serve clients located in Staten Island and Westchester County.

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