Reducing retained foreign objects in the operating room: a quality improvement initiative.
Retained foreign objects (RFO) following surgery are a never event and largely preventable. Following a decrease in days between RFO, this healthcare system implemented a quality improvement initiative across all pediatric surgical centers to reduce RFO events. Following several cycles of plan-do-study-act, days between RFO events increased from 29 to 451 days and that number of days was sustained at one year.