Published: January 14, 2009
A checklist for surgical teams that includes steps as basic as having the doctors and nurses introduce themselves can significantly lower the number of deaths and complications, researchers reported Wednesday.
A Surgical Safety Checklist to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in a Global Population (NEJM)
“Surgical complications are a considerable cause of death and disability around the world,” the researchers wrote in the online edition of The New England Journal of Medicine. “They are devastating to patients, costly to health care systems and often preventable.”
But a year after surgical teams at eight hospitals adopted a 19-item checklist, the average patient death rate fell more than 40 percent and the rate of complications fell by about a third, the researchers reported.
The senior author of the study, Dr. Atul A. Gawande of the Harvard School of Public Health, said it was hard to identify which items on the checklist had proved the most important.
But even a small change, like having surgical team members take a moment to say who they are and what they do before scalpel touches skin, can have important consequences later on should one of them develop a concern during the operation. Earlier studies have shown that communication problems are fairly common in operating rooms, with junior members of the team sometimes hesitant to speak up.