Articles: checklist.
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In the quest to reduce the incidences of morbidity and mortality associated with surgery, a number of initiatives are being explored. Could a simple checklist provide an effective means of improving surgical outcome?
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Qual Saf Health Care · Apr 2009
Development and validation of the SURgical PAtient Safety System (SURPASS) checklist.
A large number of preventable adverse events are encountered during hospital admission and in particular around surgical procedures. Checklists may well be effective in surgery to prevent errors and adverse events. We developed, validated and evaluated a SURgical PAtient Safety System (SURPASS) checklist. ⋯ The SURPASS checklist covers the vast majority of process deviations suitable for checklist assessment and can be applied in clinical practice relatively simply. SURPASS is the first validated patient safety checklist for the entire surgical pathway.
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Checklists are common tools used in many industries. Unfortunately, their adoption in the field of medicine has been limited to equipment operations or part of specific algorithms. Yet they have tremendous potential to improve patient outcomes by democratizing knowledge and helping ensure that all patients receive evidence-based best practices and safe high-quality care. ⋯ In this article, we explore some of the principles and possible strategies to further develop and encourage the implementation of checklists into medical practice. We describe different types of checklists using examples and explore the benefits they offer to improve care. We suggest methods to create checklists and offer suggestions for how we might apply them, using some examples from our own experience, and finally, offer some possible directions for future research.