The 12th annual National Time Out Day is June 8. According to the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses, the day is meant to "[draw] attention to the need for everyone on the surgical team to pause before the procedures begins in order to make sure they are operating on the right patient, the right site and they are performing the right procedure."
The following are four resources and things to know about National Time Out Day, an awareness campaign initiated by AORN, and the importance of performing a timeout for patient safety.
1. According to Joint Commission data from 2015, wrong-patient, wrong-site and wrong-procedure events were the second most common sentinel event that occurred last year, accounting for 111 of the 936 sentinel events the organization reviewed in 2015.
2. The rate of this sentinel event remains high, even though timeouts have been recommended practice since the launch of The Joint Commission's Universal Protocol with the Time Out in 2004 and the launch of the Safe Surgery Checklist as part of the World Health Organization's Safe Surgery Initiative in 2008. "Without a strong culture of safety in an organization, tools like the Universal Protocol can't succeed," said Ronald Wyatt, MD, patient safety officer and medical director in the Division of Healthcare Improvement with the Joint Commission.
3. AORN is urging healthcare workers to promote the use of time outs and National Time Out Day by hanging posters in their facility. Three posters are available here.
4. William Berry, MD, with Boston-based Ariadne Labs, has been working to improve adherence to the timeout. He provided to AORN three tips from his team's Safe Surgery Checklist Implementation Guide:
- Customize the checklist to fit your organization's unique culture and processes to drive ownership of the tool
- Always use visual guides for the checklist or timeout — don't let anyone memorize it
- Commit to take time after a surgical procedure to debrief on improving the time out, and make sure there's a system in place to deal with any issues that arise during the debriefing