Need help creating policy for counting needles in eye surgery

[sharon03031956]

At my hospital, we are in the process of creating a policy for counting needles in eye cases. One eye surgeon tells me it is absolutely impossible to lose a needle in an eye. Currently, we count only the needles that are smaller than 8-0. Please help by letting me know if you count needles at all or only certain sizes of needles during eye surgery. Thank you for all your help. Sharon

[MsLeylaBar]

We count all needles on eye surgeries. The eye team leader even counts sponges but that's too anal for me. :wink2:

Our policy says to count all needles but use discretion on sponges.

[MamaCheese]

We also count all needles on eye surgeries.

[shaomai]

After much research, we updated our policy at our institution to not count needles for retinal surgery. As for, we are not suturing inside the globe. Suturing is done to close the ports (20ga.) and the conj. Hope this helps.

[MereSanity]

I think in our OR we are counting them more for the safety of the scrubs and nurses.

[inspir8tion]

We count all the needles in all eye surgeries

[nrsbkr1995]

In our dept. we count needles, blades, hypos, scleral plugs, cannulas for 25G vits, and iris retractors for legal reasons and to be consistent with the rest of surgical services in the hospital. I know we'll never loose a keratome in the eye but we have to follow a count policy.

Brett

[brewerpaul]

Although it may not make practical sense, I think it makes sense to count all needles, all the time for medical legal reasons. If a malpractice case came to court and you were called upon to testify, how would you like to answer a prosecuting attourney who asked you "Yes or no:did you count all of the needles in this case?" You'd have no chance to explain that certain counts are sort of a moot point because it's impossible to lose certain objects in certain types of wounds. To the jury, you'd be painted as a lazy, incompetent nurse. Count'em.