tsommer74

I agree that innovations and changes in nursing practice are important ways to help decrease errors, however I'm not sure that bar coded sponge counting will be one that is widely accepted. In my opinion, it sounds a little excessive and time consuming- not entirely practical in a real life setting. The pace of the OR (necessarily at times) is fast, and this seems like it would slow down and complicate (more machines = more malfunction) this pace. The nature of being human is that we cannot eliminate errors 100%, but with consciencious nurses providing the counts, double and triple counting with a second pair of eyes, and simple aids like white boards to keep count and hanging bag separators to aid in counting, I think the accident rate should remain acceptably low. ....In fact, I'm curious about how often items (sponges) do get left in patients- do you have these statistics?