Abstract
Nearly two decades have passed since the publication of To Err is Human [1], and there has been considerable subsequent interest in research and interventions to describe and prevent health care associated injuries and improve patient outcomes. The WHO launched its “Safe Surgery Saves Lives” campaign in 2008 as a means to prevent unnecessary mortality and improve outcomes for surgical patients [2]. This program resulted in the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC) [3], which has been widely considered successful in reducing the rates of perioperative complications and mortality. Use of the WHO and similar checklists has now become widespread. However, not all investigations have confirmed their utility and checklists have certainly met some resistance wherever implemented. The purpose of this chapter is to (1) summarize the current body of literature describing the use of surgical checklists and (2) offer expert opinion as to what role checklists may serve for the practicing colorectal surgeon.
Keywords
- Safety Culture
- Quality Improvement Initiative
- Patient Safety Culture
- Surgical Safety Checklist
- Frequent Audit
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Sparks, E.A., Papaconstantinou, H.T. (2017). Checklists in Surgery. In: Hyman, N., Umanskiy, K. (eds) Difficult Decisions in Colorectal Surgery. Difficult Decisions in Surgery: An Evidence-Based Approach. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40223-9_40
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