A Three-Year Retrospective Study of the World Health Organisation Safety Checklist Compliance in a Comprehensive Specialized Hospital in Debre Tabor, North Central Ethiopia

Abstract

Introduction:

World Health Organization (WHO) surgical safety checklist implementation is important for good outcomes of surgical patients. WHO surgical safety checklist has three components (sign in, time out, and sign out) and has to be applied before the surgery and before the transfer of the patient to the recovery room. WHO surgical safety checklist was implemented in 25%−65% among the surgical team in different hospitals.

Objective:

The objective of this study was to assess the compliance and completeness of the WHO surgical safety checklist at Debre Tabor Comprehensive Specialized Hospital.

Methods:

We used a three-year retrospective survey from July 2017 to July 2020 based on a chart review of surgical patient charts. We include a total of 3460 surgical patient charts for three years period, and from this, we got a surgical safety checklist from 2842 surgical patient charts. We analyzed the data by using SPSS version 21. And finally, the descriptive statistics presented.

Results:

From this study, the compliance of the WHO surgical safety checklist was 82.1% (2842/3460). From the parts of the checklist, sign in, time out, and sign out were implemented in 85.1% (2420/2842), 43.9% (1248/2842), and 57.7% (1642/2842), respectively. The overall completeness of the checklist (all boxes ticked off) was 30.4% (864/2842).

Conclusion:

The compliance of the WHO surgical safety checklist was good but their completeness was still poor so it needs attention and follow-up for better completeness of the WHO surgical safety checklist.

Keywords:

• completeness
• compliance
• safety checklist

Data Sharing Statement

All the required documents available at the hand of the author and can be supplied upon request.

Acknowledgment

We want to thank Debre Tabor University for giving us an Ethical clearance during data collection, and the Authorities of Debre Tabor Comprehensive Specialized Hospital and data managers for their permission to do the research.

Author Contributions

All authors made a significant contribution to the work reported, whether that is in the conception, study design, execution, acquisition of data, analysis, and interpretation, or in all these areas; took part in drafting, revising, or critically reviewing the article; gave final approval of the version to be published. And All Authors have agreed on the journal to which the article has been submitted; and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Funding

The authors declared that there is no fund obtained for this project.

Disclosure

The authors confirmed that they have no conflicts of interest for this work.