Who is responsible for retained surgical sponges and retained surgical instruments?
The legal responsibility extends to the surgeon. In the case /Ravi v Williams/ (536 So2d 1374 [Ala 1988]), the Alabama Supreme Court, on the basis of “Captain of the Ship” Doctrine “…reasoned that the surgeon remains responsible for what he put in the patient’s abdomen, despite the fact that the general custom and practice…is to delegate the task of accounting for sponges to the OR nurses. The fact that the surgeon delegated the task of counting the sponges [to the nurses]…does not relieve the surgeon of the responsibility to remove them in the first place. The surgeon alone has the responsibility for removing all sponges”(7). Note: This doctrine may not be recognized in all jurisdictions. The hospital where the surgery took place may have legal responsibility as well since it is often the case that operating room nurses employed by them must undertake sponge and needle counts and it may be their error which produces the mistake even more directly than the surgeon.
