A Bibliometric Analysis of the Surgical Safety Checklist: Trends, Impact and Future Directions

Abstract

The Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC) is a form-based instrument for analyzing surgical risks. This SSC is commonly used to improve patient safety and decrease surgical mistakes. This systematic review uses bibliometric analysis to provide insights about SSC trends, impacts, and future research paths. A comprehensive search of major scientific databases was conducted to discover relevant articles published between 2017 and 2022. The keywords used were connected to the Surgical Safety Checklist, and bibliometric analysis was utilized to filter papers before establishing inclusion criteria to choose the most relevant research for analysis. According to this report, there is a growing global interest in this topic. Based on bibliometric analysis, it was found that there was a growth in the number of publications related to SSC in the time period studied. These findings demonstrate the growing global interest in SSC topics as key trends in research focus, including specific aspects of checklist implementation, effectiveness, and related outcomes, have been identified. The analysis also influenced countries, institutions and leading authors contributing to the field of SSC. The systematic review discusses the impact and implications of research on SSC highlighting the positive influence of SSC in improving surgical outcomes and patient safety culture in hospitals. This review also explores emerging research directions, such as the integration of new technologies and the application of SSC in different surgical specialties. Additionally, it identifies knowledge gaps and areas requiring further research to optimize effective implementation of the SSC.