Prospective Investigation of the Operating Room Time-Out Process.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Although the surgical pause or time-out is a required part of most hospitals' standard operating procedures, little is known about the quality of execution of the time-out in routine clinical practice. An interactive electronic time-out was implemented to increase surgical team compliance with the time-out procedure and to improve communication among team members in the operating room. We sought to identify nonroutine events that occur during the time-out procedure in the operating room, including distractions and interruptions, deviations from protocol, and the problem-solving strategies used by operating room team members to mitigate them.

Methods

Direct observations of surgical time-outs were performed on 166 nonemergent surgeries in 2016. For each time-out, th

SUBMITTER: Freundlich RE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6813865 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature