New procedures without training: Irresponsible or unavoidable?

[Rose_Queen]

My facility has been planning to start a new procedure that involves new equipment. We were supposed to be trained on it a week and a half ago by the company rep, but he had to cancel because his flight was delayed too long. We had one of these cases scheduled today, and not a single person in the room was happy that we were doing this case without adequate training. However, the surgeon insisted, and as the surgeon is the moneymaker, the surgeon won. Fortunately, the patient got through the surgery just fine, but were we unreasonable to expect training before starting a brand new complicated procedure with new equipment? This was not an emergency situation, although the expectation is that this procedure will almost exclusively be done as an emergency situation.

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

Just because things turned out well doesn't mean the risk and potential for injury and things to go wrong was mitigated.

This times a million! Too bad I can only like your response once.

I would be interested what your Risk Management people's opinion on this is. Any way of contacting them with your concerns?

It would have to be in a non-anonymous way, and let's just say that even though we are incredibly short staffed, they wouldn't hesitate to get rid of "troublemakers" even when they are patient safety advocates- I really don't want to put that target on my back. My immediate supervisor has voiced our concerns to the higher ups and we do have the support of at least two of them, so hopefully that will help us get the necessary training, although it's after the fact for those of us who were in the room for those two cases and the patients.