A large-scale review of surgical safety checklist use, published in the June issue of Anesthesiology, found patients experience fewer complications after surgery if a checklist is used by the surgical team.
In the first-of-its-kind review, researchers examined seven previously published studies that tested the effect safety checklists have on postoperative complications. The studies represented 37,339 patients who received elective or emergency surgery, and all of the studies used the World Health Organization's surgical safety checklist or a modified version.
Through the analysis, researchers found the use of a surgical safety checklist leads to 3.7 percent fewer postoperative complications overall and 2.9 percent fewer wound infections. Additionally, safety checklists lead to a reduction in patients with a lot of blood loss. However, checklists did not have significant impact on mortality rates, pneumonia or unplanned return to the operating room.
"Although checklists are considered a best practice in surgery, there is still variability in adoption and compliance rates in their use," said Brigid Gillespie, PhD, RN, with the National Health & Medical Research Council and Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, in a news release. "It is our hope that this review will provide more extensive evidence on the tremendous patient safety benefits that checklists offer and will lead to the consistent adoption of their use in surgery."
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