Use of the surgical safety checklist in the operating room: Operating room nurses’ perspectives

Abstract

Objective: To determine the opinions of operating room nurses towards the Surgical Safety ChecklistTR (SSCTR) and to determine applications for using SSCTR in operating rooms.
 Methods: This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted with 102 nurses working in the operating rooms of a state hospital and a university hospital in the Afyonkarahisar province. Descriptive statistics method were used for data analysis.
 Results: It was found that all operating room nurses knew the SSCTR and that they had a positive opinion regarding the necessity of the SSCTR. However, most of the participants stated that the SSCTR was not applied effectively in the operating room.
 Conclusion: The results obtained from the study show that changes focusing on the development of a culture of patient safety (PS) and team collaboration in operating rooms must be made in order to apply SSCTR consistently and properly.
 doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.35.3.29
 How to cite this:Kisacik OG, Cigerci Y. Use of the surgical safety checklist in the operating room: Operating room nurses’ perspectives. Pak J Med Sci. 2019;35(3):---------. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.35.3.29
 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Surgical Teams’ Attitudes and Views Concerning the Surgical Safety ChecklistTR

“…However, WHO and the Turkish Ministry of Health underline the importance of assigning one person from the surgical team as a coordinator for the implementation of SSC to achieve complete and error-free surgical procedures (17,48). Previous studies have reported that the responsibility for the implementation of the checklist is generally undertaken by operating room nurses, which is in agreement with the results of our study (30,31,33,37,42). Considering various factors, such as assigning the responsibility of checklist implementation to surgical nurses in addition to their existing duties and the time that should be allocated to the necessary preparations for the next surgery to be performed in the same operating room, it is important for institutions to determine a coordinator for using SSC at all stages for an effective implementation.…”

“…This study findings showed that almost all the healthcare professionals working in surgical units knew about SSC TR . Although this result is consistent with the findings of previous studies (30,31,33,36,37), there are also researchers reporting otherwise. For example, 81.3% of 96 healthcare professionals in a study by Karayurt et al (26) and 23.6% of 208 healthcare professionals in a study by Keskin et al (28) reported that they did not have knowledge of SSC TR (26,28).…”

“…In addition, the heavy workload of surgical units and the shortage of staff, as well as the lack of a trained coordinator responsible for ensuring the use of SSC TR can be considered as important obstacles to a successful implementation. Supporting this, both previous research conducted in Turkey (28,31) and our study revealed that a coordinator responsible for the implementation of SSC TR was not present in most institutions. However, WHO and the Turkish Ministry of Health underline the importance of assigning one person from the surgical team as a coordinator for the implementation of SSC to achieve complete and error-free surgical procedures (17,48).…”

“…Despite the reported benefits, compliance with SSC is low (3,25,26). Although there are studies investigating compliance with the use of SSC in international literature (1,3,5,8,10,13,14,23,24,27), only limited research has been undertaken in Turkey (26,(28)(29)(30)(31). The current study aimed to determine the surgical team's views and attitudes concerning the use of SSC TR .…”

Effect of the surgical safety checklist on provider and patient outcomes: a systematic review

“…The SSC produces numerous benefits that can be broadly characterised into provider benefits (eg, improvements in communication, case understanding and safety culture) and patient benefits (eg, reduced complications or mortality rates). The positive effects of the SSC attenuate when team members are not engaged (eg, when staff fail to answer questions) 9 10. In other words, the SSC’s benefits are not derived from checklist completion alone.…”