Legal/Regulatory Issues It is hard to have tea with a friend or brag about a school soccer victory without involving social media. What was once a private or family matter no longer seems real until it is texted, posted, or even turned into a movie. Healthcare organizations, including ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs),…
Adverse events occur in the best of ORs, but, of course, the goal is to prevent them whenever possible. One strategy used in surgical services at Saint Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, is to turn staff into “legal eagles” who go beyond reporting adverse events after they occur to…
Walk into any patient care unit—whether preoperative, intraoperative, or postoperative—and you will hear numerous alarm signals. Some are signaling a medical necessity, but many are false alarm noises that do not require action. Health care workers can hear several hundred alarm signals per patient per day, which may cause alarm…
Ambulatory surgery patients who become incapacitated should have their wishes for care honored, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) stresses in its new guidelines. Previously, the guidelines permitted an ambulatory surgery center (ASC), for reasons of conscience or policy, to refuse to honor advance directives calling for cessation…
AORN leaders’ efforts over the past few years have led to evidence-rated recommendations for some of the 2013 Perioperative Standards and Recommended Practices (RPs), representing “landmark progress in the evolution of recommended practices,” according to Ramona Conner, MSN, RN, CNOR, manager of the standards and recommended practices. Conner introduced speakers…
A large Chicago-area health system has built a clearer, more robust process for resolving any discrepancies in the surgical consent prior to the day of surgery. Consent discrepancies are a risk factor for wrong-site surgery. “We realized that by the time the patient arrives in the surgery area, it is…
Surgical patients who take part in a longer discussion of informed consent—15 to 30 minutes—understand their proposed operation better than those who have shorter discussions, according to a report in the June 2010 Journal of the American College of Surgeons. Asking patients to repeat back their understanding of the procedure…
It took a Texas jury less than an hour on February 11 to return a not guilty verdict for Anne Mitchell, RN. An administrator at 15-bed Winkler County Memorial Hospital in the small town of Kermit, Texas, Mitchell was charged by the local sheriff with a felony after she reported…
A former surgical technician who apparently infected more than a dozen patients with hepatitis C by stealing fentanyl and placing used syringes back on anesthesia carts pleaded guilty September 25, 2009, to federal charges of tampering and theft, the Denver Post reported. Kristen Diane Parker, 26, faces sentencing in December…
The principles of informed consent are well known—patients have the right to make informed decisions about their care, including surgery. The primary purpose of informed consent is to ensure that the patient has the information necessary to make a decision before agreeing to any treatment. The responsibility for informed consent…
