Standardization and flexibility in surgical operations

This chapter explores how standardization and flexibility in surgical operations influence safety practices and risks to the patient undergoing surgery. The issue is examined by case studies, exploring work practices and risk perceptions of operating personnel. In the surgical operating environment, it is important to consider the association between standardization and perceptions of sameness, suppression, or uniformity, which promote control but also restrain freedom. This restraint can be at odds with the freedom or autonomy expected and practised by different healthcare professions, understating the necessity of balancing explicitly formulated rules for regulating individual and collective behaviour and the ability to perform one’s job according to local knowledge, experience, and improvisation. The chapter concludes that standardization in surgical operations should compromise with flexibility, to avoid increasing risks to the patient. Political decision-makers, regulatory agencies, and hospital management should be careful in promoting and increasing standardization in surgical operations at the expense of flexibility.