Despite the introduction of the Universal Protocol, patient safety in surgery remains a daily challenge in the operating room. This present study describes one community health system's efforts to improve operating room safety through human factors training and ultimately the development of a surgical checklist. Using a combination of formal training, local studies documenting operating room sa...

AIM We carried out an audit to verify compliance to Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC), as we have become aware that compliance across different teams and by individual surgeons has not been optimal. MATERIAL OF STUDY 100 SSC records from October-December 2014 and 100 from March-June 2015 were inspected to verify correct . 44 surgeons and 34 scrub nurses were asked to complete a questionnaire to...

INTRODUCTION Poor communication is a source of risk. This can be particularly significant in areas of high clinical acuity such as intensive care. Ward rounds are points where large amounts of information must be communicated in a time-limited environment with many competing interests. This has the potential to reduce effective communication and risk patient safety. Checklists have been used in...

The concept of using a checklist in surgical and anaesthetic practice was energized by publication of the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist in 2008. It was believed that by routinely checking common safety issues, and by better team communication and dynamics, perioperative morbidity and mortality could be improved. The magnitude of improvement demonstrated by the WHO pilot studies was surprising. ...

BACKGROUND Discharge from the hospital is a critical transition point in a patient's care. Incomplete handoffs at discharge can lead to adverse events for patients and result in avoidable rehospitalization. Care transitions are especially important for elderly patients and other high-risk patients who have multiple comorbidities. Standardizing the elements of the discharge process may help to a...

BACKGROUND The WHO-surgical checklist is strongly recommended as a highly effective yet economically simple intervention to improve patient safety. Its use and potentially influential factors were investigated as little data exist on the current situation in Switzerland. METHODS A cross-sectional online survey with members (N = 1378) of three Swiss professional associations of invasive health...

BACKGROUND Pilot studies of complex interventions such as a team checklist are an essential precursor to evaluating how these interventions affect quality and safety of care. We conducted a pilot implementation of a preoperative team communication checklist. The objectives of the study were to assess the feasibility of the checklist (that is, team members' willingness and ability to incorporate...

OBJECTIVE To assess what proportion of surgical malpractice claims might be prevented by the use of a surgical safety checklist. BACKGROUND Surgical disciplines are overrepresented in the distribution of adverse events. The recently described multidisciplinary SURgical PAtient Safety System (SURPASS) checklist covers the entire surgical pathway from admission to discharge and is being validat...