Improving the practice of the World Health Organisation's surgical pause checklist at a tertiary paediatric surgical unit.
OBJECTIVE
The World Health Organisation (WHO) surgical checklist acts as a safety check before surgery. The three components are: sign in, surgical pause and sign out. This study aims to assess and improve the surgical pause at a tertiary paediatric surgical unit.


RESULTS
Theatre nurses used as a standardised tool to record how the pause was carried out. All other theatre staff were blinded. Presentation of these data at departmental meetings allowed creation of a checklist poster which was placed in every theatre. Data collection was repeated five months later. Data on 114 operations were initially collected. Fifty-one per cent of operations completed all four steps to guideline. Introduction step met guideline in 61% of operations, identity and procedure in 90%, checklist in 98% and concerns in 71%. Following intervention, data were collected from 39 operations; 77% of operations completed all four steps to guideline. Introduction step met guideline in 87% of operations, identity and procedure in 100%, checklist in 100% and concerns in 90%.


CONCLUSIONS
This study shows that by engaging with theatre staff to create an acceptable checklist poster, better standard of patient safety in the operating theatre can be achieved.
Core Surgical Trainee, Royal Hospital for Children, UK kieranmontgomery@nhs.net.
Kieran
K
Montgomery
Registrar in Otolaryngology, Hospital for Children, UK.
Imran
I
Khan
Senior Theatre Nurse, Hospital for Children, UK.
Kathleen
K
Thomson
Consultant in Paediatric Otolaryngology, Hospital for Children, UK.
David
D
Wynne
D057189:Checklist / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D013502:General Surgery / Q000592:standards*; D019983:Guideline Adherence / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital; D009873:Operating Rooms; D061214:Patient Safety; D010372:Pediatrics; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D012606:Scotland; D014944:World Health Organization
Safety; checklist; paediatrics; surgery