Surgical checklist use in Switzerland 2015 – where are we today?: a cross-sectional national survey study

Background: Although surgical checklist use is not new in Switzerland, compliance and actual use fall short behind expectations taking scientific recommendation as standard. A national media campaign to raise awareness, inform experts, and change professional norms and standards on national level about checklist use was conducted. The aim of this study was to assess current checklist use in Switzerland following a national media campaign. We further analyse possible group differences between attending physicians, hospital staff, and participants of a quality improvement initiative. Methods: A cross-sectional online-survey study was conducted by Swiss Patient Safety Foundation in Switzerland in 2015. The survey sample consisted of members of three Swiss professional associations of invasive health care (N = 1194). The survey assessed use of, knowledge of and attitudes towards the surgical checklist. A MANOVA to test for an overall effect and one-way ANOVAs for each dependent variable were conducted. Results: For four out of six variables describing the ease of checklist use, hospital staff and participants of quality improvement initiative were significantly more positive about checklist use than attending physicians. A similar patter emerged for intentions, norms, attitude, acceptance, and perceived behavioural control. On all dimensions, hospital staff and quality improvement participants scored significantly higher than attending physicians. Significant differences especially between attending physicians and hospital staff and attending physicians and participants of the initiative emerged for different variables covering use of, knowledge of and attitudes towards the surgical checklist. However, effect sizes for all variables under study were small. Conclusion: The results of the present study suggest that though WHO-surgical checklist use was further established in Switzerland it still needs to be promoted further, especially in outpatient care.