Articles: checklist.
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BMJ quality & safety · Jul 2011
Student-observed surgical safety practices across an urban regional health authority.
Recognising the global push for patient safety in healthcare, students in medicine and nursing participated in a project to compare surgical safety practices in the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA) with the WHO surgical safety checklist. ⋯ Surgical safety practices in ORs across the WRHA are consistent with the guidelines established by the WHO in 2007, but most are not monitored or enforced. The use of a checklist in the preoperative briefing period may improve adherence to these guidelines and facilitate surgical team interaction, resulting in standardisation of practice and improvements in team communication. Student interprofessional team observers are an effective tool for monitoring safety and teamwork.
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Anesthesia and analgesia · Jul 2011
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative StudyMissed steps in the preanesthetic set-up.
Anesthesiologists accomplish many tasks rapidly during induction of an anesthetic. Key preparation for induction is needed to maximize patient safety. Given the intense environment of the operating room, preparatory steps may be missed either unintentionally or possibly even intentionally to save time. We conducted this study to determine the incidence of missed steps in the operating room immediately before induction. ⋯ Missed steps do occur at a significant and measurable rate. Measures need to be taken to decrease the number of missed steps to improve patient safety.
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A checklist is a cognitive tool specifying the actions necessary to complete a given task. It serves to improve the quality of care, support the memory of the user and it may serve to indicate the necessary communicative steps within a team. ⋯ Preliminary results indicate a potential for patient safety. However, no evidence indicates that a checklist in itself is sufficient to obtain clinical results: training and motivating staff, supporting implementation, and conducting follow-up and evaluation are as important as the checklist itself to achieve results.
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Towards better patient safety: WHO Surgical Safety Checklist in otorhinolaryngology.
The World Health Organisation has developed a Surgical Safety Checklist to improve patient safety during surgery. This checklist has reduced postoperative morbidity and mortality. Prior to checklist implementation, we wanted to evaluate how it would fit into the process of otorhinolaryngology-head and neck surgery and whether it would have an impact on the awareness of safety-related issues. ⋯ Our study confirms that the Surgical Safety Checklist fits well into the surgical working process in otorhinolaryngology-head and neck surgery improving the sharing of patient-related medical information between team members. Development of a specific checklist for otolaryngology calls for further study.