My senior college project was to reduce surgeon error in an Opthamalogy department, and surgeons were definitely cagey about talking about errors. It happened t

My senior college project was to reduce surgeon error in an Opthamalogy department, and surgeons were definitely cagey about talking about errors. It happened to other surgeons but not them (but it did). They’re so scared of malpractice suits. Cataract surgery is very quick, but apparently it does happen they will implant the wrong lens into the wrong eye. The existing system at the time was a verbal one. Someone in the operating room would call out the lens model number, and the eye they were operating on, and everyone would confirm. The theory being safety in numbers. But they got it wrong sometimes. So we suggested a barcode system, where the correct model is documented ahead of time. Then when the lens is picked for surgery, it would be scanned and the computer would say if it matches or not, and it would say which eye it was to be put in. There still could be error with data entry but it would be documented with clear ownership which should decrease error. The interesting thing was in talking about the processes with surgeons, no one involved said errors ever happened there. Which makes sense - there’s only downside in doing so, but I can easily see why medical errors are hard to estimate.