Publically Reported Indicators
Surgical Safety Checklist
What Is a Surgical Safety Checklist?
A surgical safety checklist is
a patient safety communication tool that is used by a team of operating room
professionals (nurses, surgeons, anaesthesiologists, and others) to discuss
important details about each surgical case. It
is a final check prior to surgery used to make sure everyone knows the important
medical information they need to know about the patient, all equipment is
available and in working order, and everyone is ready to proceed.
About Surgical Safety Checklists (SSCL)
The SSCL is a patient safety communication tool used by the operating room team to facilitate team discussion and ensure that everyone is familiar with the case, reducing reliance on memory for certain necessary interventions. Ultimately, using SSCLs will improve teamwork and communication in the operating room, which can lead to improved patient care and safety, decreased complications and deaths from surgery, and better operating room efficiency.
SSCLs are divided into three parts relating to different phases of a surgery (i.e., briefing, time-out and debriefing), and each section of the checklist has information that is relevant to that phase. The tree-phase SSCL has emerged as a useful best practice because it organizes the information at the right moments in time.The SSCL is a communication tool used to inform all team members about important details regarding the patient and the surgery. It reduces reliance on memory so that one person is not responsible for remembering every single step needed for a safe surgery.The public reporting of our hospital’s SSCL percentage compliance allows hospitals to establish a baseline from which they can track their percentage compliance over time. Patients having surgery at our hospital can expect to have the checklist performed during their procedure.
Will a Surgical Safety Checklist be used on
me?
If
you undergo a surgery at Royal Victoria Regional
Health Centre, you can expect that the surgical safety checklist will be used as
part of the procedure. It will be used
by your health care team before, during and after your surgery to help the
health care team familiarize themselves with your medical history and any
special requirements that may be needed for your
individual case.
Percent Compliance Surgical Safety Checklist
Fiscal 2018 - 2019
The percent compliance is calculated as
follows:
Number of times all three phases of the surgical
safety checklist was performed x 100
Total surgeries
The
surgical safety checklist is considered "performed" when the designated
checklist coordinator confirms that surgical team members have implemented
and/or addressed all of the necessary tasks and items in each of the three
phases: Briefing; Time Out; and Debriefing. Therefore, the SSCL compliance
indicator is a process measure, measuring the degree to which all three phases
of the SSCL was performed correctly and appropriately for each surgical
patient.
Patient safety remains the most important priority for Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre and this involves ensuring a safe experience for patients who undergo surgery here. Our patients can expect safe, high quality care, and one tool used to help ensure a positive patient care experience is a surgical safety checklist.
