Importance of teamwork, communication and culture on failure-to-rescue in the elderly.

Ghaferi AA, Dimick JB. Br J Surg. 2015 Nov 30; [Epub ahead of print].

Failure-to-rescue is considered a potential contributing factor in the wide variations in surgicalmortality rates. This review explored the evidence regarding the surgical mortality of older patients and found system factors that affected failure-to-rescue rates, including safety cultureand access to technology. The authors suggest that teamwork and communication improvement can help reduce failure-to-rescue in this patient population.