Surgical Safety Checklist: Components, Usefulness, Implementation, and Benefits

Running head: SURGICAL SAFETY CHECKLIST
SURGICAL SAFETY CHECKLIST
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Introduction
It has been evidenced by Pugel et al. (2015), that critical clinical procedures such as
surgeries, are often subject to failures and errors n terms of communication and collaboration
resulting in increased health complications, adverse consequences and possible injuries and
infections. The usage of a ‘Surgical Safety Checklist’ is considered to be useful in the prevention
of such complications since it enables collaborative functioning of all staff of the healthcare
workforce (such as, nurses, providers of anesthesia and surgeons) to engage in performance of
safety evaluation and checks during three major steps during perioperative care: before the
administration of anesthesia, before administration of an incision in the skin and prior to the team
dispersing from the room of operation (Russ et al. 2015).
The following paper will hence focus upon briefly discussing regarding the components
of a surgical safety checklist, its usefulness, its field of implementation and its benefits in terms
of clinical quality improvement.
Discussion
Components
The surgical safety checklist is comprised of the following three components, as per
modifications of the original checklist formulated by the World Health Organization and the
recommendations postulated by the Joint Commission and American Society of
Anesthesiologists (ASA):

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 Sign In: After ensuring that the patient has checked I, he or she is relocated to the site of
the operation, upon which, a number of safety checks are conducted. These include:
evaluation of two identifiers of patient confirmation, detection of allergies due to any
medications, requirements essential for marking the surgical site, oxygen and status of the
airways, fasting for anesthesiology, status of blood transfusion, requirements for fluid and
availability of equipment prior to relocating the patient to the sift of surgery (Mitchell et
al. 2017).
 Time Out: After entering the location for surgery, a number of safety and quality checks
are performed, which include: the Joint Commission’s Universal Protocol before incision
during surgery and Medicare Core Measure SCIP 1a. The Universal Protocol comprises
of evaluation of any incomplete information or misdiagnosis prior to beginning of the
surgery, along with marking sites for surgery when multiple locations are available and
during situations or possible harm to the patient during surgery (De Jager et al. 2016).
 Sign Out: Prior to closing the wound for operation a number of checks for assessment of
quality and patient safety are required to be performed. These include, calculating total
yield of the final surgical instruments, counting the final supplies and tallying the
specimens collected, if any, after the surgery (Ramsay et al. 2019).
Usefulness
The usefulness of a surgical safety checklist is to ability to conduct a systematic and
effective evaluation to confirm that all surgical conditions critical for ensuring safety of the
patient are met along with ensuring that every staff n the surgical care team are present and hold
accountability for the outcomes after surgery (Cabral et al. 2016). Additionally, the usefulness of
surgical safety checklist, also lies in its ability to ensure prevention of any errors in recording the