Skip to main content

All Access Subscription

Get unlimited access to our full publication and article library.

Get Access Now

Interested in Group Sales? Learn more

After an analysis of national malpractice claims, patient safety researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, estimate that a surgeon in the United States leaves a foreign object such as a sponge or a towel inside a patient’s body after an operation 39 times a week, performs the wrong procedure on a patient 20 times a week, and operates on the wrong body site 20 times a week.

Surgical ‘never events’ occur 4,000 times per year