Cebu surgeons target patient safety

CEBU, Philippines – Because patient safety has not yet been institutionalized in Cebu and other parts of the Visayas, patients here who need to undergo surgery and have gone through surgery are at high risk of human error all this time.

Some 30 surgeons, operating room nurses and anesthesiologists representing government and private hospitals gathered yesterday at the Northwinds Hotel in Salinas Drive to make a clean incision on patient safety practices and malpractices.

Surgeons from Cebu, Bohol, Bacolod, and Iloilo spoke candidly about near misses at operating rooms simply because there was miscommunication between the anesthesiologist and the head surgeon or a patient was wrongly operated on because there was a switch in x-ray results. Surgeons and nurses also shared about how enraged surgeons throw surgical instruments like scalpels and syringe needles that tended to contaminate the nurse or the patient unnecessarily.

Anesthesiologist Cesar William Ortiz said patient safety still needs to be seriously imbibed and institutionalized among private and government hospitals in Cebu. Identified as common surgery errors as a result of blunders or complacencies in patient safety are wrong site meaning the area where surgery was not the affected area.

Wrong patient meaning there was a switch in laboratory results or a mismatch of names leading a physician to believe the patient to be operated on is the sick patient when he is not. This often occurs where there is a switch of results or confusion in the names of patients. Then there is wrong procedure of surgery which means the patient may not have needed surgery at all.

Poor patient safety practices in hospitals can result to what doctors call “sentinel event” or the unanticipated occurrence involving death or major permanent loss of function. That means that even if the patient does not die, the blunder can maim and disable him for life.

Dr. Axel L. Elises said that there is now a universal protocol of checklist that operating rooms must follow. But because patient safety is not institutionalized and there are no punitive actions for lapses, the implementation of the universal protocol still has to be taken seriously in Cebu and in other parts of the Visayas.

The other thing is that, there have not been formal studies made on adverse, near-miss or sentinel events involving patients in Cebu. Surgeons said that while there are reporting systems in hospitals, there has since been no formal study as to look incisively into trends, malpractices or prevalent practices.

The first public realization of the true extent of patient harm and safety in the healthcare setting was revealed in a 1999 study by the Institute of Medicine Report called, “To Err is Human.” Here it was revealed that deaths occurring from medical errors (98,000) far outnumber deaths from motor vehicle accidents (43,000), Breast Cancer (42,000) and AIDS (16,000).

Deaths from workplace injuries (6,000) are outnumbered by deaths from medication errors (7,000).

There are less deaths from adverse events occurring in nuclear reactors and the airline industry but there are more safeguards and monitoring are in place. — Ruth G. Mercado (THE FREEMAN)