Surgical checklists: Considerations for the future

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Abstract

In the fall of 1999, the Institute of Medicine released “ To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System ,” a sobering report on the safety of the American healthcare industry. This work and others like it have ushered in an era where the science of quality assurance has quickly become an integral facet of the practice of medicine. One critical component of this new era is the development, application, and refinement of checklists. In a few short years, the checklist has evolved from being perceived as an assault on the practitioner’ integrity to being welcomed as an important tool in reducing complications and preventing medical errors. In an effort to further expand the neurosurgical community's acceptance of surgical checklists, we review the rationale behind checklists, discuss the history of medical and surgical checklists, and remark upon the future of checklists within our field.

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Most cited references 65

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The ongoing debate on the incidence and types of iatrogenic injuries in American hospitals has been informed primarily by the Harvard Medical Practice Study, which analyzed hospitalizations in New York in 1984. The generalizability of these findings is unknown and has been questioned by other studies. We used methods similar to the Harvard Medical Practice Study to estimate the incidence and types of adverse events and negligent adverse events in Utah and Colorado in 1992. We selected a representative sample of hospitals from Utah and Colorado and then randomly sampled 15,000 nonpsychiatric 1992 discharges. Each record was screened by a trained nurse-reviewer for 1 of 18 criteria associated with adverse events. If > or =1 criteria were present, the record was reviewed by a trained physician to determine whether an adverse event or negligent adverse event occurred and to classify the type of adverse event. The measures were adverse events and negligent adverse events. Adverse events occurred in 2.9+/-0.2% (mean+/-SD) of hospitalizations in each state. In Utah, 32.6+/-4% of adverse events were due to negligence; in Colorado, 27.4+/-2.4%. Death occurred in 6.6+/-1.2% of adverse events and 8.8+/-2.5% of negligent adverse events. Operative adverse events comprised 44.9% of all adverse events; 16.9% were negligent, and 16.6% resulted in permanent disability. Adverse drug events were the leading cause of nonoperative adverse events (19.3% of all adverse events; 35.1% were negligent, and 9.7% caused permanent disability). Most adverse events were attributed to surgeons (46.1%, 22.3% negligent) and internists (23.2%, 44.9% negligent). The incidence and types of adverse events in Utah and Colorado in 1992 were similar to those in New York State in 1984. Iatrogenic injury continues to be a significant public health problem. Improving systems of surgical care and drug delivery could substantially reduce the burden of iatrogenic injury.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Surg Neurol Int

Journal ID (publisher-id): SNI

Title: Surgical Neurology International

Publisher: Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd (India )

ISSN (Print): 2229-5097

ISSN (Electronic): 2152-7806

Publication date Collection: 2012

Publication date (Electronic): 21 January 2012

Volume: 3

Electronic Location Identifier: 2

Affiliations

[1]Department of Neurosurgery, University of Florida, Box 100265, Gainesville, FL, USA

Department of Neurosurgery, Maastricht University Medical Center, The Netherlands. E-mail: pieter@ 123456kubben.nl

Author notes

[* ]Corresponding author

Article

Publisher ID: SNI-3-2

DOI: 10.4103/2152-7806.92163

PMC ID: 3279961

PubMed ID: 22347672

SO-VID: 50518b6f-d09e-4223-9374-6b20525bd26c

License:

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

History

Date received : 21 October 2011

Date accepted : 21 November 2011

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