The introduction of a Neurosurgical Postoperative Checklist improved quality of care and patient safety

Abstract

Purpose: Neurosurgical patients are often complex and require high quality, attentive care in the immediate postoperative period. We identified a number of issues in our department pertaining to patient safety and the assessment and management of patients following handover of care to the neurosurgical ward, and intervened with an aim to provide safe, timely, patient-centred, and procedure-specific care in the postoperative period.

Method: We reviewed the records of 50 patients between (Aug-Oct 2015) and analysed quality of postoperative assessment, prescriptions, and adherence to national standards of postoperative care. We identified barriers to effective practice and intervened by introducing a bespoke Neurosurgical Postoperative Checklist which provided a framework for the assessment and management of patients in the immediate postoperative period. We reviewed the records of 50 patients (Oct-Nov 2016) to assess adherence to the new protocol and its effect on the quality of postoperative care, and reaudited a further 50 patients after one year (Sep-Nov 2016).

Results: Prior to intervention 37/50 (74.0%) patients were reviewed postoperatively and quality was poor. This improved to 49/50 (98.0%) post-Checklist and was associated with a dramatic improvement in quality of care compared to pre-Checklist: appropriate analgesia and anti-emetics prescribed in 98.0% and 98.0% versus 26.0% and 18.0%; appropriate antibiotic and corticosteroid prescription in 100.0% and 100.0% versus 26.0% and 18.0%; and timely prescription of an appropriate VTE prophylaxis plan in 98.0% versus 2.0% pre-Checklist. Improvements were sustained after one year.

Conclusions: The introduction of our Neurosurgery Postoperative Checklist yielded dramatic improvements in patient safety and quality of postoperative care, as indicated by improved adherence to national standards of postoperative clinical assessment, and the quality and safety of medication prescriptions which are so vital in complex neurosurgical patients. We recommend the use of a neurosurgical Postoperative Checklist as a simple, cheap, reproducible tool to improve patient care.

Keywords:

• Patient safety
• postoperative
• surgery
• neurosurgery
• surgical
• checklist

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.