수술부위 오류에 대한 수술실 의료인의 인식

Perceptions of operating room personnel about wrong-site surgery

Purpose: Although surgical errors as wrong-site surgery are infrequent, they are devastating events to experience. This is a descriptive study to understand operating room personnel's perceptions of wrong-site surgery. Method: The subjects o this cross-sectional study were 266 including operating room nurses, nurse anesthetists, surgeons, and anesthetists, who work for medical institutions with more than 200 beds in D city and K province. The questionnaire consisted of 41items that reflected perceptions about wrong-site surgery; perceptions about factors influencing wrong-site surgery; perceptions about prevention of wrong-site surgery; perceptions about existence knowledge and implementation level of policies and procedures for wrong-site surgery. Results: In the operating room, 91.0% of respondents perceived the seriousness of wrong-site surgery. However, the time pressure(4.04±1.00), lack of hospital's standardized policy(3.93±0.92), staff shortage(3.67±1.12), and the lack of understanding the need for time-out(3.53±1.00) are considered to influence the wrong-site surgery. Conclusion: To prevent wrong-site surgery, the management of hospitals and the medical staff should give more priority to the safety of patients rather than productivity of operating processes. Therefore, the standards of operating room policies and procedures should be more suited to the medical environment of Korea based on the universal protocol for preventing wrong-site surgery. Also, those standardized norms and tasks should be well prepared and used for educating operating room personnel.