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The Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) is sponsoring a National Time-Out Day June 23 to highlight the importance of taking a time out before beginning a surgical procedure to verify that the procedure, patient, and site are correct.

Patient Safety Monitor Alert, June 23, 2004

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The Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) is sponsoring a National Time-Out Day June 23 to highlight the importance of taking a time out before beginning a surgical procedure to verify that the procedure, patient, and site are correct.

Reminder: Beginning July 1, 2004, all hospitals, ambulatory care, and office-based surgery facilities accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) will be required to adopt its "Universal Protocol" for preventing wrong-site surgical errors. The three-pronged protocol encourages organizations to apply a consistent approach to preoperative procedures whenever possible, including by:

>>Developing a preoperative verification process that begins when the physician determines that surgery will be necessary

>> Marking the operable site so that it is visible once the patient has been prepped and draped

>>Pausing for a "time out" immediately before the procedure so that all surgical team members can verify that they will operate on the correct site and patient.

AORN's National Time Out Day highlights the Universal protocol and other steps that organizations are taking to reduce surgical errors.

"There's still such confusion about the protocol, how to implement it, and what kinds of policies hospitals should have in place," says Leslie Durgin, MPA, AORN's vice president of external affairs.

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