Surgical safety checklists from concept to implementation

The introduction and development of the World Health Organization (WHO) surgical safety checklist in 2008 (Figure 1) led to considerable interest within the medical community regarding the proposed benefits of using a surgical safety checklist. An initial study identified a reduction in both inpatient complications and mortality with use of a surgical safety checklist (WHO, 2009a). After this study, the results led to repeated research (Van Klei et al, 2012), and soon surgical safety checklists were adopted throughout human healthcare as a way to reduce mortality and complication rates (Haynes et al, 2009; Conley et al, 2011). Surgical safety checklists are now used in all National Health Service hospitals throughout the UK (Bradbrook, 2018).

More recent authors have suggested that the benefit of using a surgical safety checklist may be directly linked to effective implementation, training and compliance of staff members. Subsequently, the importance of appropriate surgical safety checklist design, adaptation to the specific environment the surgical safety checklist is to be used in, and reduction of barriers to implementation has been highlighted (de Vries et al, 2010; Gasson and Wager, 2013; Menoud et al, 2018).