ASA leaders and executive staff participated in the inaugural National Surgical Patient Safety Summit, which was co-hosted by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and American College of Surgeons on August 4-5 in Rosemont, Illinois.
More than 100 representatives from medical associations, insurers, health care systems, payers and government agencies were involved in the summit, which focused on empowerment of each member of the surgical care team – including the surgeon, anesthesiologist, nurses and all supporting staff – to take responsibility for patient care.
Workgroups made up of representatives from surgery, anesthesiology and nursing met prior to the summit to develop draft recommendations that will be used to prepare National Surgical Patient Safety Standards, help develop surgical safety education and identify research priorities.
ASA representatives included President Daniel Cole, M.D., Laurent Glance, M.D., Fred Shapiro, D.O., Adam Levine, M.D., Arthur M. Boudreaux, M.D., Anesthesia Quality Institute Executive DeLaine Schmitz, ASA CEO Paul Pomerantz and ASA Senior Executive Operations Manager Michelle Sinklair.
The four workgroups and their ASA representatives included:
Workgroup 1: General principles, including checklists, surgical site marking, shared decision-making, surgical consent, and information transfer/hand-offs (Dr. Boudreaux).
Workgroup 2: Human factors, including individual, team/crew, clinician-patient communications, and culture (Dr. Shapiro).
Workgroup 3: Data and technology, which focused on the potential to create a common data infrastructure to measure and improve safety and outcomes (Dr. Glance).
Workgroup 4: Education which examined team training, content and need for both in graduate and continuing education (Dr. Levine).
Read more about the summit and the workgroup summaries.