Patient Safety on the Wane? (Elizabeth Hofheinz @ OTW)
When Dr. James Herndon, a former president of the AAOS and Chairman Emeritus of orthopedics at Harvard, had surgery recently, he wasn’t taking any chances. A resident came in and did the “sign your site” drill, at which point Dr. Herndon said, “Go get the surgeon…I want his signature too.”
Why the extreme caution? Because Dr. Herndon has the facts. And the overarching, disturbing fact is that patient safety among orthopedic surgery residencies has declined. Dr. Herndon, whose article on this topic was recently published in th...
