Ensuring Your Safety

The physicians and nurses at Anaheim Regional Medical Center take the following important steps to help ensure that everything goes as planned for your surgery/procedure:

Step 1: Review the Consent Form

• The consent form must include:
  • Your full name
  • Full name of surgeon or physician conducting the procedure
  • Procedure site
  • Reason for procedure
• You (or your surrogate) must sign the consent form before surgery. It should be written in words that you can understand. If you are confused or uncertain about anything, please ask.

Step 2: Patient Identification

• The operating room staff will ask you to state:
  • Your full name
  • Full social security number and/or birth date
  • Site of procedure (body part)
• The staff member will check your responses with your ID band, consent form, and other documents. Do not be alarmed by these questions; they are essential in ensuring that all of your personal information is correct.

Step 3: Marking the Surgery Site

• In the presence of an operating room staff member, you (or your surrogate) must mark the operative site with a pen before you go into the operating room.
• Do not mark non-operative sites
• Check periodically that the mark does not rub off; tell the nurse if the mark rubs or washes off before surgery.

Sept 4: "Time Out"

• Before beginning the procedure, the operating room staff will verbally confirm the following through a "time out":
  • Presence of the correct patient
  • Marking of the correct surgical site
  • Procedure to be performed
  • Availability of correct implant (if applicable)

Step 5: Imaging Data

• If imaging data are used to confirm the surgical site, two or more members of the operating room team will confirm that the images are correct and properly labeled.