Articles: checklist.
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The World Health Organization 'Surgical Safety Checklist' has been adopted by UK surgical units following National Patient Safety Agency guidance. Our aim was to assess compliance with our local version of this Checklist. ⋯ Our completed audit cycle demonstrated a significant improvement in Checklist compliance following educational intervention. We discuss barriers to compliance, as well as strategies for quality improvement, and we call for other surgeons to similarly publish their Checklist experience and assess its impact on surgical outcomes.
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Critical care medicine · Oct 2012
The impact of meeting donor management goals on the number of organs transplanted per donor: results from the United Network for Organ Sharing Region 5 prospective donor management goals study.
Many organ procurement organizations have implemented critical care end points as donor management goals in efforts to increase organs transplanted per donor after neurologic determination of death. Although retrospective studies have demonstrated an association between meeting donor management goals and organ yield, prospective studies are lacking. ⋯ Meeting donor management goals prior to consent and prior to organ recovery were both associated with achieving ≥4 organs transplanted per donor. However, only 15% of donors have donor management goals met at the time of consent. The donor hospital management of patients with catastrophic brain injuries, before the intent to donate organs is known, affects outcomes and should remain a priority in the intensive care unit.
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Surgery like civil aviation is a risk-prone occupation. Civil Aviation has reported a death rate of less than 1 in a million exposures. On the other hand, surgery has a reported mortality rate of 100 per million surgeries. ⋯ In 2009, the checklist was modified with an intention to reduce major surgical complications and was proved to be effective. Wrong level spinal surgery needs special emphasis. There may be an increasing role for checklists in Trauma and Orthopaedic surgical practice to improve its safety profile by being procedure-specific.