It has been said that where one door closes, another opens. I experienced such a phenomenon in June. A humanitarian medical team mission, with which I was scheduled to participate in Romania, was unfortunately cancelled due to world events. Within days of the cancellation news the latest edition of the Journal of PeriAnesthesia Nursing (JoPAN) arrived in my mailbox.

In July 2001 nine year old Tony Clowes died after suffering brain damage during preparation for minor surgery, following a cycling accident, when an anaesthetic tubing became blocked with a foreign body. At the enquiry it emerged that the tubing had been used on other patients despite being labeled for single-use only. A year later police ruled out “foul play” and concluded that the tragic death was a “freak accident”. This was one of many such incidents being investigated by police at the time and resulted in national and nursing media frenzy concerning the reuse of single - use equipment. (Gallagher 2002; Kenny 2002; Mahoney 2001) The debate was further fuelled by the withdrawal of single - use tonsillectomy instruments as they posed a greater danger to patients than the theoretical risk of spreading variant Creutzfeldt - Jakob disease (CJD), the purpose for which they were originally introduced. (Gallagher 2002)