Surgical Safety Checklist

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Surgical Safety Checklist: Has it achieved its purpose? British Columbia Institute of Technology NSPO 7600 Table of Content Introduction p.3 Background p.3 Purpose p.4 Benefits p.4 Evidence to Support the Benefits p.5 Conclusion p.8 References p.10-12 Surgical Safety Checklist The Safe Surgery Saves Lives initiative was established by the World Alliance for patient safety as part of the World Health Organization’s efforts to reduce the number of surgical deaths across the world. The surgical safety checklist was established in 2007(World Health Organization, 2008), it was created as a simple, efficient checklist, to ensure patient safety, facilitate team work and communication in every operation performed. Positive changes in safety culture have been hypothesized to be one of the mechanisms behind the reduction in mortality and morbidity with the introduction of the Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC). The aim of this paper is to study how the checklist has changed the perceptions of safety in the operating room and the staff using this tool, it will focus on when the checklist was initiated, the purpose of the checklist, and the current best practice regarding the implementation and continued usage of the SSC. Background The SSC is part of the Safe Surgery Saves Lives program initiated by the World Health Organization (WHO), which is aimed at improving global health care, and reducing surgical complications in particular(Chapanis,1996). The high volume of surgical procedures and high complication rates, enforced the WHO to launch the Save Surgery Saves Lives initiative in 2007(World Health Organization 2008). Purpose The goal of this initiative was to, “improve the safety of surgical care around the world by defining a core set of safety standards that can be

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