‘Never Events in Surgery’: Mere Error or an Avoidable Disaster

Never events in surgery is not an uncommon occurrence. It is difficult to find any surgeon who never had an experience of one or another kind of mistake, committed while delivering the surgical care to the patient. Whatever the reports come out through news media or other sources are just a tip of iceberg. Collectively, its results, not only as a huge suffering and financial burden for the patients but also its impact on the operating surgeon and sometimes to related institute, are very far reaching and extremely negative. In spite of all of this, every one of us thinks this as an individual problem or one of the anecdotal media coverage. The aim of this study is to create an awareness among surgeon’s fraternity and bring the attention of associations of surgeon bodies to this serious issue so that collective steps can be initiated to address it. In an attempt to find all the related information, an extensive search of literature in English language was performed using online search engines: PubMed NCBI database, Google search, and other digital sources available online. Error may be in the form of an act of commission, act of omission, error of planning, or error of execution, but whatever the reason, ultimate impacts are not less than disastrous, affecting individuals to global level. In addition to the enforcing authorities, all other stake holders should wake up and must take collective and comprehensive approach to create a safety system inside the health care organisations.