Nursing presentation HELP!

You might want to post your question in the Nursing Student Assistance Forum while you continue your research re: patient safety/error prevention in the OR setting.

Nursing Student Assistance

I am doing a PowerPoint presentation on ways I could come up with to promote patient safety and reduce medical mistakes... What are some ways I could suggest to improve on medical mistakes during emergency surgery. I have never worked in the OR or anywhere emergency so in the aspect I really have not idea what to say about it.

They are making you do a report in school on how to reduce errors in the OR??

In my experience the OR staff has very strict guidelines on pt identification, instrument counts, and other ways mistakes can happen--even mistakes still happen (although I'm guessing it is because those guidelines do not happen.

Rather than try to handle the entire procedure, I would think it would be best to focus on one area to improve safety. For example, how can pt identification/potential wrong side errors be handled from ER admission, workup, and then surgery.

Is there an area of nursing you are more familiar with that you can do the PP based on that?? If it must be the OR, maybe google can you pin point something

I heard of a situation and had to do an inservice for OR staff per Admin request. Someone had a chest tube inserted in OR and MD requested wall suction. The nurse hooked up the chest tube to a Nepture wall suction device. This device is meant for OPEN suction only, not closed like chest drainage system. The force was > -2000 ml/H20 as compared to -100 in a typical wall suction for closed devices. The patient died as a result. When I did the inservice I learned most staff, including the CRNA's, were not aware of the suction power of the devices they used!

While it's not an emergency situation our unit trialed "orange caps" on all iv access points and every central and picc line tip. They are little hubs filled with chlorhexadine. They have reduced our central line and iv acquired infections to zero.

I heard of a situation and had to do an inservice for OR staff per Admin request. Someone had a chest tube inserted in OR and MD requested wall suction. The nurse hooked up the chest tube to a Nepture wall suction device. This device is meant for OPEN suction only, not closed like chest drainage system. The force was > -2000 ml/H20 as compared to -100 in a typical wall suction for closed devices. The patient died as a result. When I did the inservice I learned most staff, including the CRNA's, were not aware of the suction power of the devices they used!

....and probably -- no, surely-- had no idea at all how a chest tube drainage sustem is supposed to work, max suction to apply and how a drainage device controls it regardless of the pull from the wall unit. Sweet Jehosaphat.

I would include the 5 rights and the additional rights as well. And your 3 Checks