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Risk Factors and Epidemiology of Surgical Safety

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Surgical Patient Care

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Abstract

Millions of people are admitted to hospitals every year; about one-third of admissions are for a surgical procedure; unfortunately, some patients experience adverse events, resulting in harm or even death. This chapter presents an overview on ways to define and classify harm, methods to assess the scale of harm, estimates of actual harm, solutions to prevent errors and harm in the perioperative area, and approaches to the surveillance and monitoring of surgical safety. It concludes that in order to support the improvement of quality and safety in surgery, a stronger focus on the upstream determinants of safety is needed.

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”

—William Faulkner

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. OptiMedis AG, Burchardtstrasse 17, Hamburg, 20095, Germany

    Oliver Groene PhD, MSc, MA

  2. Department of Health Services Research and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Tavistock Place 17-19, London, WC1H 9SH, UK

    Oliver Groene PhD, MSc, MA

Authors
  1. Oliver Groene PhD, MSc, MA
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Oliver Groene PhD, MSc, MA .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Surgery Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety & Quality, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Juan A. Sanchez

  2. Children’s Cardiomyopathy Foundation and Kyle John Rymiszewski Research Scholar, Children’s Hospital of Michigan, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI, USA

    Paul Barach

  3. Department of Surgery Center for Healthcare Studies Institute for Public Health and Medicine Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA

    Julie K. Johnson

  4. Division of Cardiovascular Surgery Johns Hopkins All Children’s Heart Institute Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, Johns Hopkins University, Saint Petersburg, FL, USA

    Jeffrey P. Jacobs

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© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Groene, O. (2017). Risk Factors and Epidemiology of Surgical Safety. In: Sanchez, J., Barach, P., Johnson, J., Jacobs, J. (eds) Surgical Patient Care. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44010-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44010-1_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-44008-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-44010-1

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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