Essential Components for a Patient Safety Strategy

Operating room safety is dependent on professional and regulatory requirements that mandate skill levels, documentation standards, monitoring, and equipment. Protocols exist for almost every procedure performed, and overall there is excellent management. Physicians, nurses, and technicians rely on these characteristics to support delivery of safe care. Most practitioners have had the experience of working in suboptimal operating room conditions. There are many causes for this state, including mechanisms for reimbursement that impede alignment of interests between physicians and hospitals; limited interdisciplinary training; and perceptions about the roles of personnel that have not kept pace with the changing nature of care delivery.