If you look behind some of the major studies on patient safety in surgery, you'll find a common name—Atul Gawande, MD, MPH. He led the well-known 2003 study documenting the incidence of retained items in surgery. He's just finished a clinical study of a bar code technology to aid sponge counts. He participated in a human factors study that yielded, among other things, the controversial finding that surgical counts competed with other patient care tasks for nurses' attention and disrupted other activities.
