WHO Safer Surgery checklist compliance amongst paediatric emergency plastic surgery patients in an UK hospital

- This study has shown the value of raising awareness of the WHO checklist for optimizing perioperative safety.
- An overall increase in checklist compliance from 88% to 91% was found.
- We have identified the areas that most need improvement and suggest ways for doing so.

IntroductionThe WHO Safer Surgery checklist has become an important component of perioperative safety. Our objective, was to determine the compliance of completing the checklist for paediatric emergency plastic surgery patients at our unit.MethodsAn initial baseline was performed with 70 patients over two months at our unit. Following this, we raised awareness at an audit meeting and closed the audit loop using 80 patients over two months. The audit is reported in line with SQUIRE 2.0 criteria.ResultsInitial compliance was 88% overall and this increased to 91% post-intervention. Compliance with the individual stages in both cycles was for sign-in: 85%-86%, for time-out 92%-98% and for sign-out 86%-89%. Around one in four checklists were not scanned in both periods.ConclusionThis audit showed a high overall level of compliance in the checklists that were scanned and available for scrutiny. We have identified the areas that most need improvement and suggest ways for doing so.