Promoting patient safety through preoperative patient verification

At Spectrum Health, Grand Rapids, Mich, a process to verify patient identification, procedure, and procedure side and site was developed and implemented to improve the current process. Focusing on risk-reduction strategies, an interdisciplinary task force revised the facility's surgical site identification policy and improved the surgical scheduling form to highlight information for sided procedures. Task force members also designed a verification checklist to require the comparison of any procedure data to the physician's order. This article describes these improvements and other methods that were established to ensure patient safety and reduce risk. Ongoing data collection verifies that the process remains in place and that team members are compliant. The improved process maximizes patient safety because it allows for early intervention when any discrepancies are identified.