Surgical Outcomes after Implementation of Safety Checklist in Hatwan Hospital in Al Sulaimaneyah
Abstract
ABSTRACTBackground: Every surgical operation may have its sequel, but also may have potential complications, failure of treatment or morbidity because of different factors. Some factors are avoidable as shortage of equipments, shortage of instruments and improper preparation of patients resulting in the wrong site or even wrong patient operation, unexpectedness or unpreparedness for potential events, unorganized operative rooms, not working in teams, low suspicion of drug allergy, unwanted reactions and improper use of antibiotics
Objective: To improve the quality of medical care and decrease morbidity and mortality through implementing 19 points of the WHO surgical safety checklist.
Method: The checklist was implemented in Private Hatwan Hospital for Endoscopic Surgery (located in As-Sulaimaneyah city, Kurdistan, Iraq with 9 inpatient beds).
Data was collected lasted from 1st of April 2009 to 31st of March 2010 including 749 patients in the postintervention period and were compared with data from the previous year (1st of April 2008 to 31st of March 2009), that included 914 patients as preintervention sample.
Results: An Improvement was noticed in the quality of medical care after the implementation of the checklist, marking the site more strictly adhered to compare with the pre-implementation period (100% vs. 78.11%). The same for marking the side of the operation (100% vs. 86.10), the use of prophylactic antibiotics (100% vs. 78.3) and preemptive analgesia (100% vs. 80.6), this has resulted in remarkable decline in complications (0.94% vs. 3.17).
Conclusions: Implementation of the surgical safety checklist will improve quality of medical care on many aspects and can diminish morbidity and mortality.
Keywords: Surgical safety checklist, Complications, Morbidity.
Copyright (c) 2011 Iraqi Medical Journal

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