The first case of the day at Saint Methodist Maplewood hospital was canceled due to no remaining time outs prior to incision.
Circulator, Renee Count explained, “We had to use an extra time out before we even got to the OR due to an unexpected nursing hand off while I was getting report. This put us in the hole before we even hit the OR doors.”
Recently the institution enacted a policy of a maximum of four time outs prior to incision after a surgery was delayed an hour in order to complete the necessary ten time outs the complex case ended up requiring.
“We never expected this to lead to cancelations,” OR director Shirley Jones stated. “We thought limiting the total time outs would help keep the pace of surgery fast enough to keep our millennial residents engaged. We’ve had problems with them exiting the OR when cases ‘weren’t fun anymore’ or ‘got boring in the middle.’”
Nurse Renee explained, “It was looking like things were going to move forward in spite of the limited remaining time outs. But then, we realized the surgical site had been initialed with a disappearing ink pen. We burned one time out just verifying that indeed the new pen we were now using was the correct pen. It was then that I knew that it was game over,” she stated.
The hospital has returned to its “unlimited time outs policy” and has added calculating the total number of expected time outs to the first time out of every case.
