| Title |
Causes of cancellations on the day of surgery at a Tertiary Teaching Hospital
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
BMC Health Services Research, July 2016
|
| DOI | 10.1186/s12913-016-1475-6 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Roland Kaddoum, Racha Fadlallah, Eveline Hitti, Fadi EL-Jardali, Ghada El Eid |
| Abstract |
Cancellation of elective scheduled operations on the day of surgery leads to an inefficient use of operating room (OR) time and a waste of resources. It also causes inconvenience for patients and families. Moreover, day of surgery (DOS) cancellation creates logistic and financial burden associated with extended hospital stay and repetitions of pre-operative preparations as well as opportunity costs of lost time and missed income. The objective of this study is to establish the rate of elective surgical cases cancellations on the day of surgery and the reasons for these cancellations stratified by avoidable versus unavoidable within a tertiary care teaching hospital in Beirut, Lebanon as well as recommend appropriate solutions. This is a prospective audit of the operation theatre list over a period of eight months (January 1, 2013-August 30, 2013). All patients scheduled to undergo elective surgeries at the hospital from January-August 2013 were included. An assigned OR staff recorded the cancelled cases in real time. The assigned staff confirmed the cancellation reason and added additional explanation if necessary by calling patients or through direct inquiry of clerical and/or clinical staff the following day. A Pareto chart was constructed to prioritize the reasons that accounted for 80 % of the avoidable surgical cancellations. For the given study period, 5929 elective surgeries were performed, of which 261 cases (4.4 %) were cancelled on the day of surgery. 187 cases (or 71.6 %) were judged as potentially avoidable cancellations versus 74 (28.4 %) that were judged as unavoidable. Of the 187 potentially avoidable cancellations, lack of financial clearance, incomplete medical evaluation, patient not showing up for surgery, and OR behind schedule accounted for almost 80 % of the causes. This study showed that the majority of cancellations were deemed avoidable and hospital related. A day of surgery cancellation rate less than 2 % is attainable. Determining the major avoidable contributors to DOS cancellations is an essential first step to developing appropriate interventions to improve operating theater efficiency. Recommended interventions were presented accordingly. |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 180 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | 180 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Master | 33 | 18% |
| Student > Postgraduate | 18 | 10% |
| Student > Bachelor | 17 | 9% |
| Researcher | 14 | 8% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 8 | 4% |
| Other | 29 | 16% |
| Unknown | 61 | 34% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Medicine and Dentistry | 53 | 29% |
| Nursing and Health Professions | 32 | 18% |
| Engineering | 8 | 4% |
| Business, Management and Accounting | 4 | 2% |
| Social Sciences | 3 | 2% |
| Other | 13 | 7% |
| Unknown | 67 | 37% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 16 February 2018.
All research outputs
#15,492,327
of 23,023,224 outputs
Outputs from BMC Health Services Research
#5,626
of 7,708 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#227,635
of 355,443 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Health Services Research
#138
of 185 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,023,224 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 22nd percentile – i.e., 22% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 7,708 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.8. This one is in the 17th percentile – i.e., 17% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 185 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 18th percentile – i.e., 18% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.