Safety Checklist: Practical Application in a Multidisciplinary Hospital Setting

Abstract

The relentless improvement of medical care does not exclude the presence of certain complications in patients during the implementation of their treatment. This may be facilitated by the complexity of the manipulations and operations performed, the possibilities of new technologies, the age and concomitant pathology of patients. The predominant occurrence of adverse consequences in the provision of surgical care has prompted the medical community to pay attention to this in the first place. In the process of searching for a simple tool to solve problems arising in the provision of surgical care, a Surgical Safety Checklist (checklist, SSC) was created at the initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO). Its introduction into standard practice in operating rooms was aimed at improving the safety of both anesthesia and surgical operations, as well as reducing complications and mortality by improving teamwork, communication and consistency of medical care. The purpose of this message is to focus the attention of specialists from various fields and ranks on the need to introduce SSC into the daily work of a multidisciplinary hospital in the form of a standardized procedure for the effective functioning of the operating unit team, the ultimate goal of which is to provide safe care to the patient. An analysis of 4 years of experience in the use of SSC in the Ilyinskaya Hospital allows us to talk about the difficult process of staff entering the workflow of using a seemingly elementary tool. However, the improvement of communication processes and the adaptation of both the mechanism of SSC implementation and its contents allow us to hope for its strict observance and, ultimately, a significant reduction in all possible avoidable risks during the provision of surgical care.