The Impact of Development and Implementation of Surgical Safety Checklist Educational Program on the Surgical Team Compliance during Major Operations

Safe surgery saves lives. Surgical complications and deaths have remained largely unchanged over
the past two decades. A surgical safety checklist may be used as a tool to prevent such
complications. Wrong-site surgery is all too common. The World Health Organization's (WHO)
surgical safety checklist aimed to improve safety in both anesthesia and surgery and to reduce
complications and mortality by better teamwork, communication, and consistency of care. The
surgical safety checklist outlines the essential standards of surgical care and has been shown to
reduce complications and deaths associated with surgery. It was designed to prevent wrong-site
surgery and improve patient safety in the operating room. The aim of this study the study was aimed
to assess the impact of development and implementation of surgical safety checklist educational
program on the surgical team compliance during major operations. Design: A quasi-experimental
design was used to conduct this study. Setting: The study was conducted in operating rooms in
Alexandria Main University Hospital. Subjects: The subjects of the present study included a
convenience sample of 50 nurses and surgeons. They were enrolled into one group pre and post
intervention. Tools: The data were collected by the following study tools: Tool I: operating room
teamwork knowledge about surgical safety checklist interview questionnaire. It was divided into
three parts there were the operating team's socio-demographic data, operating room teamwork
knowledge for surgical safety checklist, and nurses 'attitudes, and beliefs about the surgical safety
checklist. Tool II: operating room teamwork implementation of surgical safety checklist
performance checklist. Method: Pre-intervention and post-intervention study. The effect of
implementing a surgical safety checklist during major surgical procedures on patients' safety. After
conducting an education program, checklist implementation and patient safety outcome indicators
were studied. Results: the main results of the present study about one-third of the studied operating
room teamwork were in the age group (30<40) and the majority were female. It was observed that
the majority of studied operating room teamwork had incorrect knowledge pre implementing the
program. Also, the majority had correct answers following the educational program. More and
more, 100.0% of the studied group had barriers to implement the surgical safety checklist.
Conclusions: The study showed that the implementation of such an education program had
improved patient safety. In general, these efforts are viewed favorably by operating room personnel.
However, the role of these checklists and other tools in reducing wrong-sided surgeries has not been
proven. The goal of the health care professional should be to continue to improve on the advances
that have been made in implementing surgical checklists and preventing wrong-site surgery.
Implementation of the checklist was associated with a greater than the one-third reduction in
complications among adult patients undergoing surgery in a diverse group of hospitals. The use of
the world health organization's surgical safety checklist in major operations is feasible and should
be considered.