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Surgical Tools to Include RFID
andrewman327 writes "Reuters is reporting that hospitals are considering embedding RFID tags in surgical tools to prevent leaving them in patients. After closing a patient, doctors would wave a receiver over the body to look for the chips which would indicate that something was left inside. The biggest current stumbling block is the chip's size, though scientists hope they will continue shrinking as the state of the art advances."
I have a better idea.
Before closing a patient, doctors would wave a receiver over the body to look for the chips which would indicate that something was left inside.
The timing would be a little better, don't you think?
What happens if they forget the reciever inside the person?
Doctor: Nurse, hand me the wand.
Nurse: Don't know where it is.
Doctor: Oh well, I'm sure I didn't leave anything inside.
that we have to have use technology to prevent this from happening?
Why would surgeons (or assistants) think it's okay to leave a foreign object lying on top of an organ or tissue in the first place?! Also why is the surgeon in such a rush that s/he would be so sloppy?
Maybe this would be more appropiate for battlefield sitautions where things can get hairy, but then again, it's pretty rare to do open surgery in the battlefield!
Anyway put the patient on a non-metallic table and run a metal detector over them.
Doctor: "Where's the table?"
Nurse: "It was right here under the patient, who seems to be lying on the floor... "
Doctor: "Oh... Where shall we have lunch?"
How rugged are RFID chips? How are they going to hold up to being heated in an autoclave for sterilization?
...I keep getting an unexplained $248.99 charge at the Target express line!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
If your in a emergency room, you might have hundreds of tools that you need quick access to. You dont have time to count, or probobly the mental dextarity to remember to count, the number of tools your using when your trying to save someones life.
You need to concentrate on what your doing, not on how many clamps you've used.
-EL
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
There is actually a lot that goes into becoming a competent physician. You may want your doctor to remove a mole now, but if that was all your doctor could do you might feel shortchanged when you needed someone to be able to manage your barely compensated congestive heart failure, set up your mechanical ventilator when you develop ARDS after a devastating car accident, or coax your premature infant through the first months of life.
In some ways a physician is a "biological mechanic" (I suppose). But a physican in the US accepts at minimum 11 years of school and post-graduate medical training after high school (in my own experience, 16 years), and typically accrues between $150-400k in debt during this time. But more important than the enduring agony of never-ending school (much of which is also physically demanding), they also accept the emotional responsibility for others' lives.
This responsibilty is drilled into us from the time we enter medical school and continues throughout training. Medicine is a noble profession and it has to be, because there is a lot at stake. We enter into a legally binding contract with every patient we talk to, touch, or are curb-sided about by a colleague, to provide medical care that is "standard of care". This is a lot of responsibility and it is a heavy burden.
When patients die in our care, even if it is not "our fault", it is very difficult. Until you have had to personally sign the order: "1)comfort care only -- start morphine drip, 2) extubate" for a critically ill patient who has reached the point of medical futility despite your 2 weeks of effort, and then hold their hand as you let them die, you will not understand this kind of contract. But just about every physician has had to do this, probably within the first few months of internship.
With regard to residency being a hazing experience -- in some ways this is true. However, there are just a certain number of situations and disease states that you have to encounter in training and life is only so long. If you cut the hours in half, you really would need to be in residency twice as long to be competent on your own. Then I guess we would really be in a bind as far as physician supply. The AMA has a difficult job enough as it is, balancing physician supply with demand and making sure that training programs meet minimum standards to ensure adequate training.
The economics of health care are admittedly complex. However, the $40 you spend in Austria is in fact heavily subsidized by taxes. Somebody has to pay the transcripionist, the nurses, the medical assistants, the overhead associated with the clinic physical plant, among numerous other things. Then some portion maybe ought to go to the physician who is actually seeing the patient. In the US, somewhat less than 15% of health care costs represent physician reimbursement. Apply this to your $40 tab in Austria and use your analytical skills to show me how this makes financial sense.