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Bangalore January 5, 2011: In keeping with the mission of advancing patient safety and excellence in clinical outcomes, Department of Anesthesiology at Fortis Hospitals Bangalore headed by Dr. Murali Chakravarthy, Consultant Anesthesiologist, has taken an initiative to standardize the anaesthesia protocols to deliver quality clinical outcomes and provide better patient safety pre and post surgery. The department of anaesthesia, pain relief & critical care at Fortis Hospitals has launched – “Protocols in Anaesthesia” – a compendium of anaesthesia protocols. The “Protocols in Anesthesia” was launched by N Santosh Hegde, Lokayutkta, State of Karnataka.
“Patient safety is a joint effort involving every healthcare provider in the operating room, including surgeons, nurses and anesthetists. As anesthesia providers, we care for patients before, during and after surgery, and are deeply committed to keep patients’ confidence and trust that their surgical and anesthetic experience will be safe and comfortable during the procedure. Incorrect procedure or mishaps in surgery should never occur. These occurrences are the result of a system problem and a standard and systematic approach is required to avoid such problems. This standardization which impacts the actions of everyone in the operating room for the benefit of the patient can totally eliminate wrong patient, wrong operation and wrong surgery and provide quality care to the patients” said Dr. Murali Chakravarthy.
Speaking on the occasion Dr. Lloyd Nazareth, COO, Fortis Hospitals said “Patient safety is our principal focus. Our anaesthesiologists have a responsibility to safeguard patients from wrong procedure and wrong patient surgeries. We believe that an established multidisciplinary approach is needed in each operative setting to ensure the correct surgery is performed on the correct site and on the correct patient. We are therefore pleased to support and endorse this initiative which is meant for patient benefit at large.”
“Anesthesia is largely a back office operation as far as patients are concerned. Most patients have fear about anesthesia, because their life is in the hands of yet another human being. Errors on the anesthetist’s part may result in damage to the patient. There is a huge need of avoiding such errors and this initiative of Fortis Hospitals is one such which can make processes more systematic and leave no scope for error” commented Mr. N Santhosh Hegde, Lokayutkta, State of Karnataka.
Dr. Murali Chakravarthy also added, “We wish to showcase the possible benefits of such a document towards enhancing patient safety in particular and improving the standards of healthcare delivery in the society at large. We are also keen to help institutions such as Government of Karnataka, charitable institutions in establishing such ‘Standard Operating Protocols’ for health related issues. In our opinion, it might appear novel today, but will become the standard of care in healthcare delivery.”
Anesthesia is currently being practiced through the guidelines framed by the western world. Most anesthesiologist in the country practice whatever they can institute from those. As a result of this, the standard of anesthesia delivery varies from one institution to another and from one city to another. Because of this, not all anesthetics are safe. Anesthesia is like flying an aircraft. Just as there are take off, cruising and landing while flying an aircraft, anesthesia consists of starting, maintaining and termination. Most accidents during flying take place during takeoff or landing, similarly in anesthesia, during starting or terminating. The aircraft industry has achieved a high degree of safety because of protocolization. Therefore, we wish to apply the same philosophy to anesthesia, so that avoidable errors due to human factors may be eliminated from surgeries. World Health Organization has started a ‘safe surgery saves lives’ campaign in response to global patient safety challenge. Our efforts are in the same direction, because, during surgery, it is very likely that the patient might suffer serious damage due to anesthetic reasons, rather than surgical causes.