Asad Ali Toor, Amir Riaz Bhutta, Hassan Sarwar, Shad Cheema M Arshad.
Implementation of Surgical Safety Checklist Reduces Morbidity in a Tertiary Care Hospital.
Ann King Edward Med Uni Jan ;18(4):360-4.

Background: Surgery is an essential part of health care. Adverse events can occur in surgical care but more than half of these are avoidable. A number of checklists have been developed to reduce these adve-rse events; the WHO surgical safety checklist has sho-wn better outcome improvements than previous check-lists. This study was designed to apply WHO surgical safety checklist in operation theaters of a tertiary care hospital to measure baseline surgical safety protocols and outcome measurements. Methodology: This was a prospective interventional study conducted in three phases. First phase was base line data collection, implementation of surgical safety checklist during second phase and post-implementa-tion data collection in last phase. A total of 613 pati-ents were included, consisting of 303 during pre-imp-lementation and 310 in post-implementation. Duration of each phase was 3 months. Primary end points were discharge from hospital, 25 days or death. Results: The rate of post-operative infection fell from 33.7% to 16.2% (p < 0.001). Average hospital stay was reduced from 7.8 days to 6.5 days (p < 0.001). Use of non-sterilize instruments reduced from 38% to 0% (p <.001). Conclusion: Implementation of the checklist was associated with improvement in adherence to surgical safety protocols and decrease morbidity in surgical patients. It was also associated with shorter hospital stay and early patient return to work.

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