Surgical errors, including wrong site surgeries and wrong patient surgeries, occur even more frequently in American hospitals than Arizona medical malpractice lawyers have feared. According to the results of a new analysis, these kinds of errors occur as many as 40 times a week in the country.

That makes it about 40 incidents a week involving surgeries on the wrong body part, on the wrong patient, or even the wrong surgery. The results from a Joint Commission Center for Transferring Healthcare analysis found that there were at least 29 areas which are prone to errors that can lead to wrong site surgery. The data focused on eight hospitals. The mistakes that were made ranged from incomplete documentation and lack of timeout to surgical room errors.

This indicates to Arizona medical malpractice attorneys that wrong site surgeries continue to remain a major patient safety issue in the United States years after the Joint Commission Center for Transferring Healthcare released protocols to deal with these safety issues. The Joint Commission protocols involve the use of a simple checklist to prevent wrong site surgical errors. The checklist encourages doctors to mark the site to be operated on before beginning the surgery. It also calls for doctors and nurses in the operating room to take a timeout before the surgery, and to carefully determine whether the patient to be operated on is scheduled for that surgery.

However, in spite of widespread promotion of these protocols, and the fact that many hospitals use them, there still far too many wrong site surgeries occurring in the country. Also, while it may seem like wrong site surgeries are widespread, the fact is that these are rare, and many doctors and surgeons don't have experience with these. These doctors, therefore, may not be equipped to avoid wrong site hazards. Wrong site surgeries may be rare, but that doesn't change the fact that these can be devastating.