Surgical Errors Part I: leaving tools in the patient's body

4/3/07 I went to a talk by Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon, author and professor at Harvard. He did a study looking at why doctors accidentally leave sponges, tools in a patient during surgery, called "Risk factors for retained instruments and sponges after surgery."
N Engl J Med. 2003 Jan 16;348(3):229-35.
This video is aboout what I learned from him in this paper and from asking him a couple of questions.

For more of a written description:

http://bostonmedicalstudent.wordpress.com/2007/04/26/surgical-errors-part-i-l...

General idea behind these health videos:
I'm a first year medical student in Boston. Every day, I'm learning exciting and critical topics on medicine and health. But too often, the things I'm learning about never reach the public.

I wanted to try an experiment -- sharing health information on youtube, with the sole purpose of trying to get more important health information to you all. Unlike some of the other health videos out there, mine are not about promoting a book, a diet, a pill, an agenda. I hope to answer your questions either through e-mail or through the video updates -- please, please, (please!) e-mail me any questions and I will try my best to answer them by asking my professors and by citing credibles sources (JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, etc...)

e-mail:
unitedstatesmedicalstudent@gma il.com

I hope this experiment works -- and if it fails, I hope someone sees these videos, says, "hmmm, these are bad videos, but I love the idea," and decides to go for it.


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P.S. I wanted to point out something important: I'm just a medical student, so my posts are hopefully conversation starters, but only conversation starters — not medical advice. If my posts intrigue you, please read more about the topic and discuss about it with your doctor. I'd be happy to send you the information in the journal articles I talk about. Also, the opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of Harvard Medical School, its affiliated institutions, or Harvard University. Best wishes!

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• usmedstudent
• health
• surgery
• medicine
• errors
• medical
• student
• Atul
• Gawande
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• surgeon
• 身體健康
• 醫學院
• 外科醫生
• discussion

[Pianoguyjr]

Interesting, and sounds very dangerous.

Doctors of today are becoming more away of yesterday's mistakes; yet for the future to have NO mistakes.

I love it!

[usmedstudent]

thanks for your comment!

[dalastkyng]

with the surgical staff hand counting the instruments though...that should be fool proof. more than one person should count the instruments so there is no conflict of interest involved in the closing of the procedure.

[windogmassey1]

Hi, Thank for uploading these videos - very helpful. I have known a case of leaving a needle in a cancer patent after a mastectomy, a friend of mine mentioned it a few years ago becouse it was his wife. It caused extreame pain and after an xray it was noticed and retrieved.

[StarbucksBallet]

OMG..I would be so pissed at myself If I ever did that to someone on accident...

[susanolen]

Thank you for this video. I am an OR nurse and this will help me when a surgeon ARGUES with me when I tell him we need to take an Xray before waking the patient up

[chopinnocture]

this was great, I just heard a a talk by Atul Gawande on the radio, and then youtubed him and found this video. I really enjoyed it, made a lot of sense

[undertoes]

very interesting, yo, atul gawande is the man