Surgical Safety Checklist Compliance

Making Your Surgery Safer: Surgical Safety Checklist

The Surgical Safety Checklist was created to make sure you are as safe as possible. Developed by the World Health Organization, and adapted by the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, the Surgical Safety Checklist is quickly spreading across the country, preventing hundreds of potential mistakes every year.

WHAT IS A SURGICAL SAFETY CHECKLIST?

The surgical safety checklist is a standardized communication tool that is used by the operating room teams (nurses, surgeons, anesthesiologists, and others) to discuss information about each surgical patient. The surgical safety checklist has three important phases during your surgery:

1. Before you are put to sleep – the Briefing Phase
2. Just before the first incision – the Time Out Phase
3. While or just after the surgery is completed – the Debriefing phase

WHAT IS BEING MEASURED? 

The Surgical Safety Checklist Compliance rate is the percentage of surgeries for which the surgical safety checklist was performed. 

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? 

Safe and effective care is a top priority to ensure positive outcomes for patients at Temiskaming Hospital. Use of the Surgical Safety Checklist has been shown to reduce the rates of complications associated with having surgery and improve communication between members of the surgical team in the operating room.

The Surgical Safety Checklist formalizes what we have already been doing to ensure that our team communication is seamless, thereby further improving the safety of the care we provide.

WHAT IS THE TARGET? 

Temiskaming Hospital aims to remain at or above the provincial rate. The provincial rate for the 2020 was 98.95%

HOW ARE WE DOING? 

Temiskaming Hospital has demonstrated consistent compliance.

To learn more about the Surgical Safety Checklist, please visit Health Quality Ontario System Performance - Health Quality Ontario (HQO) (hqontario.ca)