APPLYING THE ANALYSIS OF POTENTIAL FAILURE MODES AND THEIR EFFECTS IN EVALUATING CLINICAL RISKS IN OPERATING ROOMS

Operating rooms are among the special hospital wards which constitute important stages in the treatment of patients with the use of special equipment and health standards. With the purpose of ensuring the safety of patients and the staff in the operating rooms and due to the necessity of clinical risk assessment, the current research focuses on the evaluation of clinical risks occurring in the operating rooms of an educational hospital. The current study is an applied research and the required data has been collected qualitatively through focus group discussions in Golestan hospital, Ahvaz, in 2015. The tools for data collection were the standard worksheet of potential failure modes. The priority matrix was used to analyze the potential failure modes and prioritize each failure mode. By performing needs assessment via Delphi method and reviewing the 50 processes in operating rooms, 10 processes were identified as being high-risk processes. After reviewing the processes in the focus group discussions, 121 potential failure modes were discovered out of which 7 potential failure modes were in the red zone after using the standard priority matrix and thus required immediate action. In order to improve the safety of patients during surgery, it is necessary to pay serious attention to the pre-operation procedures. In addition, by the use of team activities in the field of risk management, the safety culture can be institutionalized in special wards of hospitals. Keywords: Clinical risks, Operation rooms, potential failure modes analysi