LEFT OR RIGHT If you're repositioning the patient for a regional block or in the OR, have staff pause to confirm the surgical site.

TIMEOUT X2
Pause After You Reposition Patients

Everyone knows it can get confusing when you move a patient from supine into prone position, and the patient's left leg is now on his right side. To help minimize confusion and the potential for wrong-site surgery, we've starting using "pauses."

In every procedure, we perform a 3-step process: an initial briefing while the patient is still awake, a standard time out before the incision and, finally, a de-briefing before the surgeon leaves the room. However, for those times when a patient is repositioned between those steps, we pause.

For example, if a patient is undergoing an ear procedure and is moved 180 degrees between the initial briefing and the time out, the team pauses and confirms the procedure, the surgical site and the marking. We also follow this process for patients receiving regional blocks in pre-op, since they can sometimes require injections on different sides of their body.

Katherine L. Kirkham, MSN, RN, CNOR
University of Florida Health-Shands
Gainesville, Fla.
[email protected]