Te Whatu Ora in Auckland has been found in breach of health regulations after surgical equipment was left in a woman’s abdomen after surgery.<\/p>\n
The woman had experienced severe pains in her abdomen after a C-section at Auckland City Hospital.<\/p>\n
A CT scan found the dinner plate-sized instrument in her abdomen 18 months after her surgery.<\/p>\n
The instrument itself was an Alexis wound retractor (AWR), a soft tubal instrument used for holding open surgical wounds.<\/p>\n
The woman had visited her GP several times, as well as the emergency department at the hospital, prior to the AWR being found.<\/p>\n
The Health and Disability Commissioner found the health board had breached the consumers rights code, which give every patient the right to have services provided with reasonable care and skill.<\/p>\n
Te Whatu Ora in Auckland told the commission the process for ensuring all surgical tools were accounted for following surgery was laid out in its Count Policy.<\/p>\n
However, at the time of the woman’s surgery, AWRs were not included as part of the policy.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Morag McDowell said the Count Policy did not provide sufficient guidance for staff to determine which instruments should be included in the count.<\/p>\n
It instead relied on staff applying their own interpretation of what instruments were “at risk of being retained”.<\/p>\n
She recommended Te Whatu Ora write to the woman to apologise, and offer the opportunity to meet face-to-face.<\/p>\n
“As set out in my report, the care fell significantly below the appropriate standard in this case and resulted in a prolonged period of distress for the woman,” McDowell said.<\/p>\n
“Systems should have been in place to prevent this from occurring.”<\/p>\n
McDowell also recommended Te Whatu Ora confirm a directive to include AWRs as part of the surgical count.<\/p>\n
Te Whatu Ora in Auckland was also referred to the Director of Proceedings to determine whether further proceedings should be taken.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
VIA RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Te Whatu Ora in Auckland has been found in breach of health regulations after surgical equipment was left in a woman’s abdomen after surgery. The woman had experienced severe pains in her abdomen after a C-section at Auckland City Hospital. A CT scan found the dinner plate-sized instrument in her abdomen 18 months after her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7627,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7625\/revisions\/7627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}