Introduction of the Surgical Safety Checklist

Study Overview
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Brief Summary
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In January of 2007, the World Health Organization's (WHO) World Alliance for Patient Safety initiated a project called Safe Surgery Saves Lives 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 and others, the WHO created a surgical safety checklist that encompasses a simple set of surgical safety standards that can be used in any surgical setting. Each safety step on the checklist is simple, widely applicable, and measurable. The Surgical Safety Checklist was piloted in 8 hospitals around the world and results demonstrated a significant decrease in death rate and postoperative complications. This study proposes to introduce an adaptation of the Surgical Safety Checklist for an ambulatory care surgical program and to assess the efficacy of its adaptation and implementation on staff safety attitudes and patient outcomes. Specific ambulatory-based items will be included in the checklist and patient outcomes will be assessed using the Institute for Health Improvement's Perioperative Surgical Outcomes Tool which will also be adapted for use for the ambulatory setting as well as routine follow up phone calls with patients on the 1st postoperative day.

Official Title
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Patient Safety: Introduction of the Surgical Safety Checklist and Patient Outcome Assessment in an Academic Ambulatory Hospital

Conditions
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Postoperative Complications

Participation Criteria
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria: ambulatory surgical patient Exclusion Criteria: in-patient or any patient who is planning to be admitted to hospital postoperatively

Ages Eligible for Study
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Minimum Age: 16 Years
Maximum Age: 90 Years

Sexes Eligible for Study
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All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers
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No

Study Plan
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How is the study designed?
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Arms and Interventions

| Participant Group/Arm | Intervention/Treatment |
| --- | --- |
| Ambulatory Surgical Patients 1<br>The nature of the operating room time out for ambulatory surgical patients will be examined before implementation of the World Health Organization's Surgical Safety Checklist. | |
| Ambulatory Surgical Patients 2<br>The nature of the operating room time out for ambulatory surgical patients will be examined after implementation of the World Health Organization's Surgical Safety Checklist.Ambulatory surgical patients | |

What is the study measuring?
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Primary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| The primary outcomes of this study are to determine if there are significant differences in (a) staff safety attitudes and (b) incidence of postoperative complications before and after implementation of the Surgical Safety Checklist |  | Before and after implementation of checklist | 
| The primary outcomes of this study are to determine if there are significant differences in (a) staff safety attitudes and (b) incidence of postoperative complications before and after implementation of the Surgical Safety Checklist |  | Before and after implementation of the safety checklist | 

 Terms related to the study
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Keywords Provided by Centre Hospitalier Valida
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Patient Safety, Team work, Communication, Ambulatory surgical patients