Tracking surgical instruments: from a management perspective to safety issues

Abstract

This paper focuses the importance of tracking Surgical Instruments (SI). Since the goal of healthcare is to be able to deli ver necessary quality services, while, reducing healthcare costs, it was necessary to understand the problems related to these particular devices. The aim was to search for research that already tackled these issues and what were their suggestions/solutions to these problems. Therefore the problems of tracking SI in healthcare environments are recognized and analyzed, centered in the facilities through where the instruments flow. To valida te the literature review, an investigation on the real contex.t was performed. This was conducted in a participant-observer research in three hospitais to correlate the findings and specify the problem. This investigation shows that, if the primary scope of tracking SI was a way to achieve optimization of the devices process flow, problems of patient safety are also issues that could be addressed trough management control.