The study describes adherence to completion of the safe surgery checklist and its respective items by health professionals in a public hospital's surgical center. This was a retrospective document study covering the period from 2010 to 2015. The results show that 58.5% of the checklists were completed out of a total of 24,421 surgeries performed. Checklist adherence was only higher on weekdays in the first year of the study, even though there was a specific professional designated to complete it. There were differences in completion between the surgical times, and in times 1 and 2, there were items that were never used, such as members of the surgical team, patient identification, and place of the surgery. No important changes were observed in adherence to completion of the safe surgery checklist during the study period.