It's clear that surgical mistakes—however minor they may be—are still prevalent on surgical tables and still cause significant health problems. You can easily get plenty of statistics online to verify some frequencies of surgical accidents. From problems of communication and preparation, to complete blunders like operating on the wrong limb or side of a patient, surgical mistakes are costly for everyone and can cause a medical practitioner to lose their license. That's why it's important to operate alongside a medical computer so that mistakes are reduced, whatever the cause. Here are three common mistakes that can happen in surgery that can be reduced with the use of a medical computer.
Use a Medical Computer to Track Items
Nearly 6 thousand patients per year leave the operating room table with leftover surgical equipment still inside them; a majority of these foreign objects are sponges that can cause painful medical symptoms and result in patient death if not handled properly. Some patients leave the table with surgical instruments still inside them. For standard surgical procedures, these kinds of mistakes shouldn't happen, but to err is human and these mistakes are still a costly problem in operating rooms.
For the betterment of surgical procedures, it's best if surgeons use medical computers to track RFID-enabled instruments being used in patients. As an instrument, sponge, or other supply is removed and used in operation, the computer can track its use. A surgeon can then refer to it after a long procedure and ensure all equipment is accounted for appropriately before wrapping up their procedure. The medical computer is there to catch what exhausted surgeons may miss when wrapping up a procedure.
Anesthesia Errors Happen All Too Often
Anesthesiologists are heavily responsible for ensuring a patient is unconscious before surgical procedures begin and remain safe throughout an operation. It's one of the first steps in surgery that is incredibly important for the well-being of the patient during an operation. However, mistakes can easily happen even at this early stage of the operation. Anesthesia awareness is a very real result of not administering enough anesthesia, and it can cause long-term psychological damage to patients. Approximately 40 thousand Americans experience anesthesia awareness every year. Other common errors are just as scary—too much anesthesia can lead to a coma or brain injury. Unsatisfactory patient monitoring can lead to unsafe oxygen levels. Whatever the cause of the mistakes of the anesthesia, a small mishap can lead to profound negative results.
Anesthesiologists benefit from using a battery-powered medical computer that is certified for near patient use to monitor vital signs and administer the proper dosages of anesthesia. This allows the anesthesiologist to be in the room during surgery, in what is often referred to as Computer Assisted Sedation (CAS). There is an entire field dedicated to controlling the state of the brain with anesthesia, and MRI studies have shown distinct differences in the conscious and unconscious mind and their relationship to specific parts of the brain. As practitioners use this and unravel more secrets of neurology, they can understand more about how the brain works and the proper dosages and practices of administering anesthesia. Not only would we see a proper reduction in accidents circling around administering too much or too little medicine, but using a medical computer to record patient vitals in real time would provide informatics for further research and understanding, as well as more automated processes for sedation.
Wrong Site, Wrong Procedure, Wrong Patient
It's true that impossible-sounding mistakes have occurred beyond operating room doors. Sometimes a surgical team proceeds with the wrong procedure on the wrong patient—often referred to as WSPEs (wrong site, procedure, and patient errors) or "never events"—and any number of poor workplace practices can point to reasons why these exist. Stories of some cases are available for research online, such as when a patient with a head injury had his leg operated on in error. The doctor mistook the patient for another. It's mistakes like these that lead to malpractice and legal matters in the future.
Surgeons and medical staff are encouraged to use guides and checklists installed onto medical grade computers in the operating room that guide surgeons with every step of a procedure—even on agreeing which patient is being operated on. Plus, surgical procedures are typically arduous processes that can take from several hours to beyond an entire day to complete. The use of computers in surgery can assist a surgeon at any moment in time and guide them through a surgical procedure, however complex it may be. New technological advancements are pushing robots into surgery now, so after operating for 20 hours the surgeon may not need to use their hand to make incisions. Efforts to reduce human involvement in surgery are growing with this new technology. Hopefully as adoption of these sophisticated technologies increases, we will see a reduction in surgical mistakes.
It's important to understand that surgical mistakes can't be reduced to zero; they will still happen regardless of using a medical PC or not. Reduction is our goal when it comes to any problem in the medical realm that detracts from the well-being of people, but it starts with being prepared with the right technology. Contact us to learn more.