With the availability of free, readily downloadable surgical safety checklists from various websites the checklist has become accessible for any practice wishing to implement it. There is now a good research base into how the surgical safety checklist can work in veterinary practice and this article will help you to choose, adapt and implement the checklist into your practice in a streamlined and professional manner. Ultimately the goal is to improve communication of the teams involved, provide consistency of standards, improve patient safety, reduce the instance of errors and improve morbidity and mortality rates.

Patients presenting for thoracic surgery either acutely or chronically will always be demanding and require extensive planning for anaesthesia, surgery and recovery with many factors needing to be considered and resolved before beginning. This article will focus on the main considerations of these three points.