Healthcare Surgical Safety Australia Report 2022

Running head: HEALTHCARE
Surgical Safety
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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HEALTHCARE
Describe the intent of the Surgical Safety Checklist published by the World Health
Organization and discuss the role of the Registered Nurse in the provision of safe and
quality healthcare
The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist formulated in 2008, intends to maintain the
safety criteria of the surgical protocol. Ramsay et al., (2019) suggested that the
implementation of the surgery safety protocol in Scotland between the year of 2008 to 2010,
reduced the rate of mortality (p <0.001), and minimized the risks. According to Woodman
and Walker (2016), the first criteria in the induction of anesthesia is checking the patient
identity and the site and method of surgery. This helps in confirming that the right patient is
having the right surgery. Next, the marking of the site is important in applicable cases to
make the correct incision. The anesthesia and medication need to be checked to validate that
no intrusion can happen during surgery. The inspection of the pulse oximeter is necessary to
monitor the patient’s pulse during the procedure. Then confirming the record of allergy,
airway or aspiration risk, and risk of blood loss monitoring is necessary to eliminate
associated risks. Before the process of skin incision, confirming the identity of the team
members are necessary to confirm that all eligible persons are present in the operating room.
The information regarding antibiotic prophylaxis and critical events anticipation is necessary
according to the role of the medical personnel to confirm safety of the process. The imaging
display should be checked, wherever applicable to ensure patient safety during the ongoing
procedure. Before the patient leaves the surgical room, the nurse must verbally confirm the
name of the procedure, instrument counts and ensure labeling of the specimen. This will help
in proper identification of the pathological condition of the patient based on the labels. The
count of instruments must be confirmed, to crosscheck the list each time, and to eliminate any
probable mistake. The surgeon, anesthetist and nurse must inform about any possible post-

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HEALTHCARE
operative complications for comprehensive care of the patient (World Health Organization,
2019). The Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA), standard 2.6, suggests that a
nurse must ensure safe practice to provide effective care to the patients. The registered nurse
can ensure the sterility of the instruments, maintain counts of instruments or equipments,
disinfect them, label the collected specimen, inform about possible issues of instruments.
They can identify the procedures and report regarding any issue of the instruments.
Analysis of the Surgical Safety Checklists set by the World Health Organization and
Local Healthcare Service
The local healthcare service contains various criteria in the surgical safety checklist.
The before induction of anesthesia checklist contains similarity to that of WHO checklist, as
it contains information such as patient identity, team members identity, site marking,
procedure naming, and allergy risks. The column of before skin incision is not present,
whereas some checklist points from the before anesthesia portion of the WHO list is included
here. The information such as image display, antibiotic prophylaxis, surgical review, nursing
review and anesthetist review is included here from that portion. The portion of information
from the “before leaving the operating room” are more or less same, but according to WHO’s
checklist the labelling of the specimen is done by the nurse by confirming the patient’s name,
and the nurse also crosschecks the instruments and the needle count. The airway or aspiration
risk of the patients is assessed in the WHO checklist, but not in the local healthcare service
list. Perlas, Arzola and Putte (2018) suggested that respiratory complications such as
anesthesia related aspiration can be fatal for the patient. The local health-service did not
include the functioning of pulse oximeter in the checklist. Enoch, English and Shepperd
(2016) revealed that use of a proper pulse oximetry could monitor information about oxygen
concentration in the blood. Hence, the use of this is very necessary to assess patient