This is a repository copy of Effectiveness of a national quality improvement programme to improve survival after emergency abdominal surgery (EPOCH) : a stepped-wedge cluster-randomised trial. Effectiveness of a national quality improvement programme to improve survival after emergency abdominal surgery (EPOCH) : a stepped-wedge cluster-randomised trial. The Lancet. ISSN 0140-6736 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)32521-2 eprints@whiterose.ac.uk https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ ReuseThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence only allows you to download this work and share it with others as long as you credit the authors, but you can't change the article in any way or use it commercially. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Implications of all the available evidenceDespite the success of some smaller projects, there was no survival benefit from a national quality improvement programme to implement a care pathway for patients undergoing emergency abdominal surgery. To succeed, large national quality improvement programmes need to allow for differences between hospitals and ensure teams have both the time and resources needed to improve patient care.

PurposeThe daily surgical ward round (WR) is a complex process. Key aspects of patient assessment can be missed or not be documented in case notes. Safety checklists used outside of medicine help standardize performance and minimize errors. Its implementation has been beneficial in the National Health Service. A structured WR checklist standardizes key aspects of care that need to be addressed on a daily surgical WR. To improve patient safety and documentation, we implemented a surgical WR checklist for daily surgical WRs at our hospital. We describe our experience of its implementation within the general surgical department of a teaching hospital in the UK.MethodsA retrospective review of case note entries from surgical WRs (including Urology and Vascular surgery) was conducted between April 2015 and January 2016. WR entries of 72 case notes were audited for documentation of six parameters from the surgical WR checklist. A WR checklist label with the parameters was designed for use for each WR entry. A post-checklist implementation audit of 61 case notes was performed between Jan 2016 and August 2016. To assess outcome on patient safety, adverse events relating to these six parameters reported to the local clinical governance team were reviewed pre – and post-checklist implementation.ResultsOverall documentation of the six parameters improved following implementation of the WR checklist (pre-checklist=26% vs post-checklist=79%). Documentation of assessment of fluid balance improved from 8% to 76%. Subsequent audit at 3 months post-checklist implementation maintained improvement with documentation at 72%.ConclusionThe introduction of the surgical WR checklist has improved documentation of key aspects of patient care. The WR checklist benefits patient safety. It improves communication, documentation and ensures that key issues are not missed at patient assessment on WRs. A crucial factor for successful documentation is engagement by the senior clinicians and nursing staff on its benefits which ensures appropriate use of WR checklist labels occurs as doctors rotate through the surgical placement.