Introduction
The article explores the regional trauma typical for health care institutions in Nigeria, but prevalent all around the world across multiple hospitals. It discusses multiple potential causes behind the systemic issues relevant to the acute care setting of the outlined hospitals, in particular, those related to wrong-site surgeries. Wrong-site surgery is a term used to refer to a variety of clinical errors that concern incorrect surgeries or surgeries performed on the wrong person or the wrong side of the body (Nwosu, 2015). Considering the matter at hand, it is no surprise that such medical errors most often lead to devastating consequences. These issues can cause mortality and morbidity among patients and are likely to discredit the national health care industry overall. At the same time, they are rather difficult to prevent, particularly at the structural level. Notably, in this article, there was no discussion of any tool or method to effectively prevent the wrong-site surgery issue in a health institution.
Wrong-Site Surgery: A Common Issue
Most sources discussing the issue of wrong-site surgeries are united in their perception of the problem as preventable. The risk factors include emergency treatments, multiple professionals being assigned to a patient, patients’ underlying conditions or physical deformities, and necessity for multiple simultaneous procedures. WSS is most commonly caused by a lack of a formal method for verifying the surgical site or a failure in the established system that checks it prior to the operation (Engelhardt et al., 2017). When performing a root-cause analysis, one should be looking for the underlying organizational reasons or circumstances that led to an incident. These include, but are not limited to, inadequate preoperative evaluations, a lack of patient information in the operating room, missing surgical site markings, lack of checklist verification, and general communicational failure.
As with many other issues addressed during the course, wrong-site surgery is considered to be more of a system failure than an individual surgeon’s mistake. This point of view is supported by troubling yet clear evidence, with the emergence rates of this type of error being on the rise. The culture of denial, blame, and humiliation is prevalent in such cases, contributing to the relevant anxiety and creating barriers to research and effective future prevention. At the same time, it is clear that current patient safety protocols are far from perfect and should be updated and incorporated effectively in the relevant safety protocol.
As a systemic failure, wrong-site surgery possibility is certain to negatively impact the psychological well-being of patients. In many cases where the surgical intervention is required, they are already troubled by the upcoming procedure. The prospect of wrong-site surgery is frightening because the patient has little to no control over what the surgeon does after they have gone through the pre-operation step (Engelhardt et al., 2017). There would be fewer medical errors if a common checklist was used from the beginning to the finish of the process. Furthermore, better accountability procedures are needed by the hospitals to ensure accountability of surgeons, that have committed a wrong-site operation. These procedures should involve not only punishing, but rehabilitation-oriented practices that would allow eligible surgeons to continue practicing without stigma and would contribute to the error prevention in the future.
Electronic Health Record Advantages
The introduction of the electronic health record would assist substantially in reducing the risk of wrong-site surgeries and thus contribute to the improvement in efficiency of the overall medical practice. It provides a more accessible and manageable way of registering, cataloguing, processing, and editing a patient’s data. Clear and informative health record would allow a surgeon to better familiarize themselves with the information on patient’s condition and prior interventions (Engelhardt et al., 2017). On the contrary, a minor error committed during the registration process has the potential of severe long-term consequences. If a patient’s information is entered into a wrong chart, the patient in question may receive a wrong drug dose or have their test result be forwarded to the wrong physician (Engelhardt et al., 2017). When multiple surgeries are prescribed, such confusions have the potential to spin out of control, and override any positive effects of prior treatments. Depending on when the issue is discovered during the registration process, there may be an opportunity to ensure that it is addressed before patients are harmed. In terms of clarity, legibility, and transparency of data processing, electronic records management has significant advantages over any traditional record-keeping.
Biblical Application and Conclusion
Overall, the preventive measures associated with navigating the issue of wrong-site surgeries tend to correlate with the virtue of patience. “The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise, as some regard slowness, but is patient with you, not desiring that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance,” Peter says at 3:9 (King James Bible, 1611/2013). Patience is a virtue, and in health care procedures it is rewarded even more so then usually, often directly enabling a patient professional to save multiple human lives. Consecutively, the attention to detail and general concentration throughout every surgery will significantly reduce the number of wrong-site errors. In conclusion, when it comes to giving exceptional treatment the first time a patient walks through the door, patience is essential. And, perhaps even more importantly, the lack of patience is likely to lead to devastating, sometimes even fatal consequences.
References
Engelhardt, K. E., Barnard, C., & Bilimoria, K. Y. (2017). Wrong-site surgery. Jama, 318(20), 2033-2034. Web.
King James Bible. (2013). W. H. Stevenson. (Original Work Published 1611).
Nwosu, A. (2015). The horror of wrong-site surgery continues: Report of two cases in a regional trauma centre in Nigeria. Patient Safety in Surgery., 9(6), pp. 1-4.