Wrong side/omitted procedure

I would suggest reading all the replies and you would notice that the common theme is " why did you sign the consent." Regardless of the fact that I've been a member of one month, you had seven years of membership or five years as a nurse to realize that you have to be an advocate. If you can't advocate for yourself, then how can you do for others. That was my source of frustration. Seek your answer with the Director of Surgery at the facility...not here. Enough said.....done with the entertainment.

I would suggest reading all the replies and you would notice that the common theme is " why did you sign the consent." Regardless of the fact that I've been a member of one month, you had seven years of membership or five years as a nurse to realize that you have to be an advocate. If you can't advocate for yourself, then how can you do for others. That was my source of frustration. Seek your answer with the Director of Surgery at the facility...not here. Enough said.....done with the entertainment.

OP stated she was in pain, and wanting to be out of pain won out above all other sensibilities or nursing knowledge. She was in fact a patient and the responsibility was on the OR nurse to act as the patient advocate.

You should never expect any of your patients to have more knowledge than they have received from you or the rest of the medical professionals during their stay. If you the OR nurse informed the patient than she can not speak to the surgeon until she signs the consent, most patients will believe you and also believe than you will not let anything bad happen.

Seeking advice here from OR nurses is a way for the OP to verify that this is not the usual MO in the OR, and receive good direction as to whom she should direct her concerns to. I believe she has received great direction.

Finally, it would not have been entertainment to see the OR nurse and surgeon dancing on the witness stand, explaining why a wrong site surgery was performed.

I cannot imagine WHY A NURSE WOULD REQUIRE YOU TO SIGN A PERMIT THAT YOU INDICATED WAS NOT CORRECT!!!!!!!!

Having said that I am appalled and embarrassed by the lack of professionalism and disregard of patient safety and the WHO, Joint Commission, AORN ,ect... emphasis on correct site surgery. I cannot imagine this happening! I would bring this up to the management of the hospital or surgery center where you had your procedure. I would caution that you should never sign a permit that is incorrect EVER no matter what anyone tells you.

The nurse who initially refused to send you along until you signed the wrongly worded consent was (unfortunately) doing what she thought that she was supposed to do. And if not, she was certainly being lazy. I do agree that the consent should have been rewritten correctly PRIOR to your signing it. The nurse could have had the physician paged even if she could not send you on.

How often does something like this happen? I don't know. Once is too many. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon; although, thankfully, it is rare.

I am appalled at some of the personal attacks towards you. I think that every nurse in this forum has at one time or another been intimidated by a physician or other medical professional. Either as the nurse, as the patient, or as the family. Anyone that states otherwise is either in denial or a liar. It has happened to me. It is currently happening to my uncle. And he IS A physician. He is being screwed around by the system and either has no way around it or doesn't know the way around it.

This is a forum for information and/or for support. Personal attacks really have no place here.

Sent from my iPad (so excuse any typos and autocorrects!!) using allnurses.com

I would suggest reading all the replies and you would notice that the common theme is " why did you sign the consent." Regardless of the fact that I've been a member of one month, you had seven years of membership or five years as a nurse to realize that you have to be an advocate. If you can't advocate for yourself, then how can you do for others. That was my source of frustration. Seek your answer with the Director of Surgery at the facility...not here. Enough said.....done with the entertainment.

You need to realize that these things happen and get your head out of the sand. It was NOT entertainment when it was found that my patient had a sponge left inside of him after surgery. No nurse is perfect. Even though coworkers blamed the OR nurse and criticized her, I did not. I realized she is human, however it was a big teaching moment. Part of sticking together is catching eachother when we fall.

The OP was a pt. not a nurse. There have been several times when I didn't advocate for myself while being hospitalized, was in a different mindset.

i work in risk management, and cringed the whole time, reading your post. unfortunately i'm sad to hear that you gave in and signed the consent. imagine a patient in the same position doing that, and along the way, communication was broken, and another patient became and rapid response, and your nurse responded. during all the chaos, of helping that patient, she forgot about telling you that a new consent would be seen. your wheeled in to the or, and next thing, you have a wrong site surgery. you signed the consent for the surgery, validating that indeed that was the correct surgery to perform. you were aware of the risks and benefits. the surgeon and the hospital have very good high priced lawyers, that will do everything to protect them. i would speak with the risk management office and administration at the facility you were at. there are serious issues. i would hope that the md had informed you of the risk and benefits, and that the anesthesiologist, had come to speak with you first, before consent was signed. then that the correct site was marked prior to any narcotic, or anesthesia. joint commission has checklists, that facilities should tailor to their needs, that were invented to prevent these type of incidents.

You could have said, "I'll sign it if you sign on there first and put your license number there". Then write "signed under duress and protest" under your signature. Haha, seriously, you already knew the answer to this question before you let yourself be manipulated by this automatonic nurse who couldn't be bothered to think outside the box! For certain some nurses might roll their eyes and think it's a big pain in the orifice, but you can't afford to care what they think because the stakes are too high. It's possible that the nurses there were afraid of the surgeon or surgeons- I've seen surgeons with filthy mouths screaming at staff all day long and nurses scared witless to speak up for fear of losing their job- this is in places where abuse is tolerated because they can't recruit enough good surgeons or in places where the surgeons go golfing with the administrators and have the clout to get staff members they don't like fired at their whim.

I wouldn't of signed it. No way. I would have had them fill another one out with the right side indicated and then I would sign.

I don't think she's looking for attention because I have seen this kinda thing happen and as recent as July 6, 2012. As an O.R traveling nurse sometimes I am amazed how certain hospitals operate and allow this kind of behavior in order to facilitate their schedule. Always in a hurry to finish an assembly line of patients on their surgery schedule. I believe her because I see this type of bad habit in hospitals especially in ones that don't require their patients to be marked prior to surgery or the ones that medicate the patient prior to speaking with the surgeon. Really scary stuff and although we don't believe it is common practice it still occurs in plenty of hospitals and even Magnet status hospitals.

To avoid delaying or cancelling the operation, could the patient correct the consent form themselves by scratching out and rewording it for accuracy, then initialing the change? Would that be legally acceptable?

I would suggest reading all the replies and you would notice that the common theme is " why did you sign the consent." Regardless of the fact that I've been a member of one month, you had seven years of membership or five years as a nurse to realize that you have to be an advocate. If you can't advocate for yourself, then how can you do for others. That was my source of frustration. Seek your answer with the Director of Surgery at the facility...not here. Enough said.....done with the entertainment.

All the other posters here have nailed it and I thank them all. The post by goats'r'us shows that this is a policy at some places and not just a 'new nurse' thing, so I will be calling the hospital to discuss my concerns with them as this policy can potentially lead to future patient harm. Some of my other questions were answered here and are not a problem now that I understand it (i.e. versed), so by gathering information here first, I can now have a clearer, more effective conversation with the hospital regarding their policy.

If you take the time to read the other posts here and on other parts of the boards you can see how things are very different when you are a patient vs being the nurse, and to see how policies vary widely between hospitals, and how perspectives vary widely between people. What's obvious to you as a OR nurse may not be obvious to me as a non-OR nurse and patient in pain. Likewise, things obvious to me may not be obvious to you.

I agree I should not have signed the consent form, that I don't dispute. I'd figured I could put my foot down if needed when I saw the doc but didn't think of some of the things others here have mentioned, such as an unexpected event such as a code messing that plan up. That's the great part about these boards, you can get information, new perspectives, support and advice from fellow nurses who 'get it', and can use what is gained here to better our own nursing practice. Its an amazing community and I'm saddened that you think this is not the place to 'seek answers'.