Content area
Full text
KEYWORDS Surgical safety / Surgical checklist / WHO
Surgery plays a prominent role in healthcare worldwide. It has been estimated that the rate of fatal events occurring in surgery is about one in ten thousand exposures and up to one million deaths per year. Most errors are caused by failure of non-technical skills. The WHO surgical safety checklist has shown that patient safety could be improved by using a simple and effective method. However, achieving high compliance requires research, training and local adaptation.
Background
The delivery of healthcare is complex, with potential for errors caused by human factors and system failures (Panesar et al 2011). In the twenty first century, patient safety has become an important issue in healthcare management worldwide (Yang et al 2007). Most errors that occur in surgery are caused by failures of non-technical skills such as communication, leadership and teamwork. To increase awareness and understanding of this considerable issue, patient safety is being developed as a medical school curriculum by patient safety scholars in partnership with John Hopkins University (Lancet editorial 2008).
Surgery plays a prominent role in healthcare worldwide with growing attention to quality and safety in the delivery of such care (Haynes et al 2011). The increasing focus on surgical safety appeared with the categorisation of surgery as a very unsafe industry. It has been estimated that 234 million operations are being carried out annually worldwide with a rate of fatal events occurring at 1 per 10,000 exposures, and up to one million deaths per year (Haynes et al 2009).
Trauma surgery alone has a complication rate of 1 in 100 exposures, whereas the rate of death in the aviation, railway and nuclear industries is less than one per million exposures (Emerton et al 2009). In developed countries, the rate of serious complications from surgical procedures ranges from 3 to 16%, and interestingly, around half of these incidents are preventable and avoidable (Lancet editorial 2008, Mahajan 2011, Allard et al 2011).
Evidence from root cause analyses suggests that we do most of the things for most patients most of the time, but not all of the things for all patients all the time (Reid & Clarke 2009) Although the incidence of operating on the wrong patient or...