Surgery Checklist Reduced Deaths And Complications

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Scalpels, Check. Anesthesia, Check. Sutures, Check. Making a checklist, Check. I think checklist will be a good idea for surgeons and a study aims to prove just that. Following is a excerpt from Medical News Today regarding a study about the use of checklist prior to surgery and how it affects the outcomes. Very interesting.

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An international pilot program that introduced a Surgical Patient Safety Checklist in eight hospitals in eight cities around the world resulted in nearly one third significantly fewer deaths and complications among a diverse adult patient population undergoing non-cardiac surgery.

The findings were written up as an academic paper in the 14 January online issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, NEJM by the pilot program researchers who are part of the World Health Organization (WHO) Safe Surgery Saves Lives Study Group.

In their background information the authors described how surgical complications are common and often preventable, and suggested that a simple checklist might help improve communication among surgical team members and consistency of care, in much the same way as the pre-flight checks that pilots perform. Continue reading the complete article via Surgery Checklist Reduced Deaths And Complications.