National Time Out Day Celebrates Adoption of First
Universal Protocol to Prevent Errors in U.S. Operating
Rooms
New protocol will affect how millions of surgeries are
performed
Denver (June 21, 2004)—For the first time,
nurses, surgeons and accredited hospitals throughout the
country are being required to adopt a common set of operating
room procedures in an effort to eliminate the alarming
number of deaths and injuries due to wrong-site, wrong-procedure
and wrong-person surgeries.
ASA is one of six national health care organizations
and associations, led by the Association of periOperative
Registered Nurses (AORN), that have joined together to
promote the adoption of the Joint Commission on Accreditation
of Healthcare Organizations’ Universal Protocol for
preventing wrong-site surgery errors in U.S. operating
rooms. To promote the new requirements, surgeons, perioperative
nurses, anesthesiologists and other members of the health
care team have declared June 23 National Time Out Day.
On July 1, all Joint Commission-accredited hospitals,
ambulatory care and office-based surgery facilities will
be required to take a “time out” before a surgery
begins. The “time out” is a final step before
a surgical procedure to verify that the correct procedure
will be performed on the correct patient.
National Time Out Day was created to increase awareness
and generate greater urgency for implementation of the
Universal Protocol among the health care community. The
“time out” is one of several requirements of
the Universal Protocol that will apply to the more than
70 million surgeries performed annually.
The National Time Out Day is one of many efforts under
way to increase patient safety and identify the cause
of errors. It is significant because it represents collaboration
among nurses, physicians and health care executives to
reduce errors and improve care.
Besides ASA and AORN, the organizations promoting National
Time Out Day, are the Joint Commission, the American Hospital
Association, the American College of Surgeons (ACS), and
the American Society for Health care Risk Management.
Approximately 50 health care associations are endorsing
the Universal Protocol. ASA President-Elect Eugene P.
Sinclair, M.D., represented ASA at a Summit Conference
on Wrong Site Surgery on May 9, 2003, sponsored by the
Joint Commission, ACS and other hospital, medical and
dental organizations.
Additional discussions on this topic were included in
the February 2004 ASA Newsletter’s “Administrative
Update” and “Practice
Management” columns.
AORN has created a special National Time Out Day Web
site, www.nationaltimeoutday.com,
and distributed 55,000 tool kits to health care professionals
throughout the country to help facilitate that implementation.
Patients and their families are encouraged to have ongoing
communication with their health care providers about
their medical care. Better communication among patients,
nurses and physicians is an important ingredient to
improve overall care.
National Time Out Day would not be possible without
the following partners:
News
The following USA Today news article further explores
Universal Protocol:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-06-21-double-check_x.htm