Surgical Safety Checklists

Updated 3/2017-- photo and all links removed as many are no longer active and it was easier than checking each one.

Last week I received the December 2010 issue (pdf, pp 9 - 20) of the Arkansas BCBS Provider’s News. The item that caught my eye was: Blue Surgical Safety Checklist Implementation.

If your hospital or surgery center is looking to implement the use of a surgical safety checklist, then this will be quite helpful.

If you have missed it, the background of surgical safety checklist:

In January of 2007 WHO began a program aimed at improving the safety of surgical care globally. The initiative, Safe Surgery Saves Lives, aims to identify minimum standards of surgical care that can be universally applied across countries and settings.

…. Through a two-year process involving international input from surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, infectious disease specialists, epidemiologists,
biomedical engineers, and quality improvement experts, as well as patients and patient safety groups, WHO created a surgical safety checklist that encompasses a simple set of safety standards that can be used in any surgical setting.

….. the checklist, which was officially launched on June 25, 2008, in Washington, D.C. Surgical safety is
now a priority for health care safety and quality improvement.

….

Recently, Stephen Colbert hosted Dr. Atul Gawande who attempted to explained how checklists make flying, surgery and Van Halen shows safer.

…..
From WHO:
Integrated Management for Emergency and Essential Surgical Care (IMEESC) tool kit
WHO Surgical Safety Checklist