Risk Factors Associated With Incorrect Surgical Counts

Incorrect surgical counts after surgery are a perplexing problem for nurses working in the perioperative environment. To determine factors associated with an incorrect surgical count, this cross-sectional, correlational study examined explanatory variables (eg, patient and nurse characteristics, intraoperative circumstances, staff involvement) by using data abstracted from perioperative medical records and primary data collected from perioperative nurses. In the final multivariate analysis, six variables were significantly associated with an incorrect surgical count: a higher surgical risk, a lower body mass index, a complicated procedure, an unplanned procedure, an increased number of perioperative personnel involved, and an increased number of specialty teams involved.