Time Out & Count Boards
Surgery and Operating Room Practices have a Primary Healthcare Goal: Patient Safety
As the world of healthcare becomes more complex and technology improves, it is important to take a breath and create balanced processes. The professional practice has a primary healthcare goal of patient safety with composed ethics to avoid conflicting agendas. Staff and nurses make countless decisions, great and small, that effect our patients in our surgery and operating rooms(OR). Seamlessly incorporating education, experience and solid foundation elevates efforts to avoid error. Incorporating Time Out & Count Boards establishes a collaborative approach to keeping patients safe in your surgery rooms and Ambulatory Surgery Centers.
That’s a “time out,” is a phrase that takes us back to our childhood as a discipline technique used by our parents or a sporting event where there is a pause in the game. Today, as a healthcare professional the environment of patient safety is cultivated by the “time-out” technique. Preventing patient harm, near misses, and wrong-site surgery is of the utmost importance. Avoid shattering consequences for the patient and impact on the surgical team from the surgeon to the staff to the hospital which would have professional liability exposure.
- Focus on Patient Safety
- Reduce Forign Object Incidents
- Reduce Adverse Events and Jeopardy Fines
Custom OR communication boards allow for the specific protocols the team follows. More over a custom interchangeable board available in glass and plexi allows for the sturdy custom layout to be updated easily as needed. VisiCare™ custom Surgery OR boards for pre-op, in the OR, and post-op to create consistency from the standardization of their custom designed graphics. Learn more about VisiCare™ Glass Boards →
Surgery OR Safety Checks with Time Out & Count Boards
Checklists and count boards for prevention of wrong-site/side, wrong-person, and wrong-surgery are based on research that drives safe practice in high-risk areas. The value of teamwork and communication has been studied for years in several high-risk industries, such as shipping. The bridge and OR are similar, as they are both high-risk learning environments; to some degree these two environments are interchangeable. Numerous findings suggest that current weaknesses in the OR may be the result of a lack of standardization and team integration. The solution may be a standardized checklist for use in the OR. Furthermore, a counts board provides structure in how critical communication takes place and ensures that no breakdown in communication occurs, not unlike shipping port dispatch. The advent of the “time-out” has applications throughout the health care environment and has proven to be a very important tool.
Time Out Boards help memory recall, especially for mundane matters that are easily overlooked in patients with critical, time-sensitive, dramatic, and distracting conditions. Checklists clarify the minimum expected steps in a complex process. By helping a team work together, checklists establish a high standard of baseline performance. They are particularly applicable to the OR and Ambulatory Surgery Centers setting where checklists have been used successfully around the world. Get A Quote Started →
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