Characteristics of intraoperative emergencies and perspectives on operating room emergency responses in a large Academic Medical Center: A case series

Only four (5.4%) calls were documented in the hospital incident reporting system; two involved patient death which is a mandatory reporting event.Discussion This case-series highlights fundamental issues associated with OR ‘calls for help’. [...]the desktop app was only utilized 17% of the time. Cardiac arrest code call 15 (22%) Pulseless electrical activity cardiac arrest Employee syncope 2 (2%) Medical student had a syncopal event Table 1 Classifications of Calls for Help from the OR, with frequency and examples. 1 Introduction of a standardized emergency call activation tool, e.g., smart device push-notification application with the capability to further define emergency. 2 Designated OR RRT with the main nursing coordinator and anesthesia attending coordinator acting as core responders of this team with formal CRM or TeamSTEPPS type training 3 Standardized operating protocol for common perioperative emergencies, cognizant of local data. 4 Tracking OR ‘calls for help,’ recording and clear documentation in patient notes for local needs assessment and QI. 5 Clearly defined boundaries of OR RRT to prevent overlap of the hospital and perioperative RRTs. 6 Introduction, orientation, training (especially simulation), and creation of “champion leaders” across all perioperative staff groupings to a new standardized approach of activating and responding to OR ‘calls for help.’