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BODYCAST - THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE CSOT Patient and technologist safety in the cast room and clinic By Tom Byrne, OTC, OPA-C Reprinted with permission from Orthotech Professional 2(5), 1-6, September/October, 2005. “The Cast Room” is a treatment area, a place where procedures from wound care to pin removal to fracture reduction take place. The direct responsibility for establishment and maintenance of a safe environment in the cast room is that of the orthopaedic technologist. Both patient and technologist safety are the subject of this article. The specifics are not as important as the concept that we, the orthopaedic technologists, must engage in the “active process” of preventing problems. This means we must look at all procedures that take place in our areas and set up controls and actions that deal with possible safety issues. We must develop protocol for any actions within our area of control, and we must correct problems if they do occur. This major concern over patient and staff safety is reflected in the data from the New England Journal of Medicine, dated December 12, 2002, that states: “40% of patients have experienced a medical error, whether themselves directly or with a family member …in addition, one-third of doctors reported seeing a medical error.” “Safety
is an active process that systematically employs preventative
and corrective actions to avoid injury.” Further evidence that safety is becoming a point of strong concern is the establishment of the Patient Safety Coalition, formed in November 2002. This group consists of the AAOS, NAON, Orthopaedic Corporate Advisory Council and Orthopaedic Military Physicians. These normally very independent groups actually formed an alliance to deal with safety issues!
This abstract is a portion of the article
which appears in the Spring 2006 issue of BodyCast.
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