TIME OUT!
Wednesday, June 9th, 2021 was National Surgical Time Out Day. The pre-surgical time out was introduced in 2003, when the Joint Commission released the Universal Protocol for Preventing Wrong Site, Wrong Procedure, and Wrong Person Surgery. Since then, the time out has evolved over the years to address a wide variety of factors in the perioperative environment, including surgical fire risk, presence of necessary materials and imaging, and proper preparation of the patient.
According to the Joint Commission, during the time out, the team members agree, at a minimum, on the following:
- correct patient
- identity correct site
- procedure to be done
These factors are the bare minimum, and there are many other factors that need to be considered, so it is encouraged to use tools such as this one, which can be checked off with a dry erase marker and reused time out after time out.
Click the image above to access Jackson Medical’s new Surgical Fire Safety Toolkit. You can download a flyer size or a poster size of the Time Out! design above. By using these tools, you will help proactively enhance patient safety and follow surgical best practices, for example using preventive solutions like a safety cover (e.g GloShield) on fiber-optic light cables.