Compliance with the Surgical Safety Checklist. Results of an Audit in a Teaching Hospital in Italy

Abstract

AIM: We carried out an audit to verify compliance to Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC), as we have become aware that compliance across different teams and by individual surgeons has not been optimal.

MATERIAL OF STUDY: 100 SSC records from October-December 2014 and 100 from March-June 2015 were inspected to verify correct . 44 surgeons and 34 scrub nurses were asked to complete a questionnaire to know surgeons’ compliance to the different stages of the Checklist and the compliance of each surgical team. 100% of scrub nurse and 73.7% of surgeons completed the questionnaire.

RESULTS: All Checklist records were correctly filled out but we could verify that while nurses have a strong commitment to the SSC, the Checklist’s implementation is not being actively supported by all surgical team members.

DISCUSSION: Many surgeons showed limited awareness of not collaborating during SSC procedure and admitted delegating the responsibility for answering questions to other members of their team. A number of them fell into contradiction answering to various parts of the questionnaire. Consistent with the literature, at our hospital there is a gap between quality of Checklist paper records and correct use of this safety tool.

CONCLUSIONS: Thanks to the data we have collected we will improve the way the SSC is used and promote change in the behavior of surgeons. Eighteen surgeons (40.9%) expressed willingness to be involved in a work group to revise the SSC and we hope that their commitment to safety and quality will increase.