This announcement seeks to raise awareness of the potential risks associated with the use of robotic-assisted surgical devices in mastectomies or cancer-related care. Recommendations for patients who may seek to have robotically assisted surgery include asking about their surgeon's experience with these procedures and discussing benefits, risks, and alternatives regarding available treatment options with their health care provider. Suggestions for health care providers include completing specialized training on procedures they perform. A WebM&M commentary described the challenges and benefits associated with robotic surgery.

Labeling mistakes in the pharmaceutical production cycle can remain undetected until the affected medication reaches a patient. This alert reports a recall of a neuromuscular blocker for use in surgery due to it being mislabeled as a medication to increase blood pressure. 

In-depth incident investigations provide details of care process examinations to motivate learning and improvement. This report examines cardiac surgery patient mortality at a National Health Service Trust over a 5-year period. It highlights weakness in professionalism at the individual and organization level as a contributor to the preventable patient deaths catalogued over that time.

Reporting mistakes in anesthesiology practice can motivate and inform error reduction work. This website provides a secure tool for submitting incident reports to a centralized system for analysis and evaluation in Canada. The tool includes a mechanism to share data, responses, and solutions to the reported problems back to the participating organizations.

The Joint Commission requires time outs prior to surgical incision. This Web site includes information and resources for National Time Out Day, an initiative to raise awareness on the importance of surgical team time outs. The annual observation is in June.

This site hosts a guideline collection as a part of the Association of PeriOperative Registered Nurses' (AORN) patient safety initiative targeting the needs of perioperative registered nurses. It develops new guidelines related to patient safety issues (such as medication safety and prevention of retained surgical items) and helps health care professionals ensure that best practices are followed.