Incidence and risk factors for nursing-related intraoperative incidents: A 5-year retrospective study at a Japanese tertiary care hospital.

The study was done at a single tertiary hospital, so other hospitals with different staffing may not match. It relied on retrospective incident reports, so some incidents may not have been reported or documented accurately. It did not measure how complex each surgery was, which could explain part of the risk. It did not record the experience of surgeons or physicians who delivered instruments. Each surgery was treated as independent even if the same patient had several operations, so clustering was not accounted for. There were too few incidents in most specialties for subgroup analyses by specialty or procedure type. Team communication, operating room culture, and nurse fatigue were not assessed.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Do not read this as proof that long surgery or less experienced nurses cause incidents. The study is observational, relied on incident reports that may miss events, and did not measure surgical complexity, team communication, or fatigue.