Factors contributing to non-adherence of the peri-operative surgical team to WHO surgical safety checklist in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

IntroductionThe World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist addresses acceptable practices for patient safety. This paper aimed to explore and describe the factors that contribute to non-adherence of peri‑operative surgical team to WHO surgical safety checklist at the selected hospital in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. MethodsThe study adopted a qualitative design. The population consisted of a 12 peri‑operative surgical team with an average of 12 years’ experience in their respective medical fields. This population was purposely selected from a selected hospital operating theatres in Saudi Arabia. Non-probability purposive sampling was used to select the participants. Data was collected by means of semi-structured individual interviews. Content analysis was used to analyze data. ResultsThe findings revealed that peri‑operative surgical team experience challenges when implementing WHO SSC (2008). The challenges affect their adherence, which depends on a convergence of intertwined factors, such as the use of WHO SSC related to issues in the checklist steps and uncertainties regarding the safe use of WHO SSC, team factors, checklist items factors and procedural factors. ConclusionThe study clearly identified factors that contributed to suboptimal WHO SSC execution by peri‑operative surgical team in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, addressed at the institutional level. It is therefore important for the managerial teams to be supportive to the surgical perioperative team to improve adherence to WHO SSC. Support can be provided through continuous supervision, in-service training, mentoring, evaluation and awarding merits for the good adherence to patient safety. Furthermore, these findings can be used to develop strategies to promote perioperative surgical team adherence to WHO SSC and can be used for further research.