Product Code: ILSC2011_301

"Team Time Out" - Competition of Safety Regulations in the Operation Theatre
Authors:
H-Peter Berlien, Evangelische Elisabeth Klinik; Berlin Mitte Germany
Ute Mueller, Evangelische Elisabeth Klinik; Berlin Germany
Presented at ILSC 2011

With more complicated operations the risk of any accident or mismanagement increases. But the question is if with more regulation the safety for staff and patient really increases or an interference of different regulations happens. But no standard can prevent mismanagement. With the international trend of overwhelming regulations in all parts of life even in the hospitals there are created new regulations by sociologist and psychologist and they introduce ritualized procedures. One is the so called patient safety act. The European medical Device ask for precise and in national languages written user guides. But esp. in these soft regulations they use new terms or new definitions of old terms which includes the risk of misunderstanding or misinterpretation. In a spontaneous questionnaire of a hospital staff two third understands the term Team Time Out as a relaxing or changing of the operation team and so on. Only 5% did know the specific interpretation. Furthermore other important safety procedures will come into the background.
Before new regulations in the OR are introduced one have to check if they are really necessary.