[Establishment of a modified surgical safety checklist for the neurosurgical patient: Initial experience in 400 cases]

Proposal for a complementary surgical checklist for brain tumor surgery

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

Once the WHO generic surgical checklist has been standardized and following the itinerary proposed, it is up to the different specialties to continue advancing in the improvement and adjustment of the checklists to the procedures and interventions in their field.

METHODS

Through a Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) in which professionals from the surgical area of ​​the Torrecárdenas University Hospital, Jaén Hospital Complex and Gregorio Marañón General University Hospital participated, aspects that could condition patient safety in the surgery of the brain tumors and that are not included in the WHO generic surgical checklist were recognized. The three authors gave a score between 1 and 5 to each of the proposed items incrementally depending on the degree of suitability. Based on the score obtained, they selected those who would be incorporated into the specific surgical checklist.

RESULTS

A total of 24 candidate items were identified to be included in the specific check list. These obtained scores between 14 and 10 points. After this weighting, it was decided to include the 12 best-rated items in the final surgical checklist, six of them in the initial phase, three in the phase prior to the incision and another three in the final part of the checklist prior to the completion of the procedure.

CONCLUSIONS

Professionals in the surgical area of ​​Neurosurgery can identify aspects not included in the generic checklist whose non-compliance can condition the patient's safety at least to the same extent as those included in the generic list. It is possible to propose a specific complementary checklist for brain tumor surgery, in charge of collecting aspects related to the safety and success of these procedures.

The Neurosurgical Intraoperative Checklist for Surgery of the Craniocervical Junction and Spine

Many sectors within healthcare have adapted checklists to improve quality control. Notwithstanding the reported successful implementation of surgical checklists in the operating theater, a dearth of literature addresses the specific challenges posed by complex surgery in the craniocervical junction and spine. The authors devised an intraoperative checklist to address the common errors and verify the completion of objectives unique to these surgeries. The data over six years is presented retrospectively; no historical control for comparison is available, as those omissions and surgical errors addressed by the checklist are not generally registered in any morbidity and mortality reports. Through six years and approximately 1200 surgeries, the checklist was implemented with 98% compliance. The checklist eliminated the occurrences of mundane surgical errors, minimized iatrogenic complications, and ensured completion of specific objectives. We discuss that preoperative checklists, now in general use in all hospitals, have not addressed the most common, intraoperative omissions. These technical omissions result in part from the complexity of spine surgery and directly impact the surgical outcome. The Neurosurgical Intraoperative Checklist is a practical, rapid, and comprehensive means to prevent common, avoidable errors and iatrogenic complications inherent to spine surgery.

Clinical risk management - a 3-year experience of team timeout in 18 081 ophthalmic patients

PURPOSE

Clinical risk management aims to identify, analyse and avoid errors and risks systematically to improve patient's safety. Preoperative checklists to prevent mistakes have gained importance in the last few years. A so-called team timeout checklist was introduced in October 2011 at the Department of Ophthalmology, Hietzing Hospital, Vienna. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the benefits and demonstrate the value of team timeout.

METHODS

After the team timeout had been in use for 6 months, all near misses that occurred over a period of 34 months were assigned to the following groups: wrong side, wrong lens, wrong patient and miscellaneous.

RESULTS

Eighteen thousand and eighty-one surgeries were performed in the specified period; 53 cases of 'wrong side' and 52 cases of 'wrong intraocular lens' were noted. Ninety-six near misses concerned the patients' data and 38 concerned documentation. A reduction of near misses was noted after an adaptation phase of 3 months.

CONCLUSIONS

Team timeout proved valuable, as it improved the patients' safety with minimum effort. Errors may occur despite several preoperative controls and can be detected by performing team timeout.

Checklists in Neurosurgery to Decrease Preventable Medical Errors: A Review

Neurosurgery represents a zero tolerance environment for medical errors, especially preventable ones like all types of wrong site surgery, complications due to the incorrect positioning of patients for neurosurgical interventions and complications due to failure of the devices required for the specific procedure. Following the excellent and encouraging results of the safety checklists in intensive care medicine and in other surgical areas, the checklist was naturally introduced in neurosurgery. To date, the reported world experience with neurosurgical checklists is limited to 15 series with fewer than 20,000 cases in various neurosurgical areas. The purpose of this review was to study the reported neurosurgical checklists according to the following parameters: year of publication; country of origin; area of neurosurgery; type of neurosurgical procedure-elective or emergency; person in charge of the checklist completion; participants involved in completion; whether they prevented incorrect site surgery; whether they prevented complications due to incorrect positioning of the patients for neurosurgical interventions; whether they prevented complications due to failure of the devices required for the specific procedure; their specific aims; educational preparation and training; the time needed for checklist completion; study duration and phases; number of cases included; barriers to implementation; efforts to implementation; team appreciation; and safety outcomes. Based on this analysis, it could be concluded that neurosurgical checklists represent an efficient, reliable, cost-effective and time-saving tool for increasing patient safety and elevating the neurosurgeons' self-confidence. Every neurosurgical department must develop its own neurosurgical checklist or adopt and modify an existing one according to its specific features and needs in an attempt to establish or develop its safety culture. The world, continental, regional and national neurosurgical societies could promote safety checklists and their benefits.

A realist analysis of hospital patient safety in Wales: applied learning for alternative contexts from a multisite case study

Background

Hospital patient safety is a major social problem. In the UK, policy responses focus on the introduction of improvement programmes that seek to implement evidence-based clinical practices using the Model for Improvement, Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. Empirical evidence that the outcomes of such programmes vary across hospitals demonstrates that the context of their implementation matters. However, the relationships between features of context and the implementation of safety programmes are both undertheorised and poorly understood in empirical terms.

Objectives

This study is designed to address gaps in conceptual, methodological and empirical knowledge about the influence of context on the local implementation of patient safety programmes.

Design

We used concepts from critical realism and institutional analysis to conduct a qualitative comparative-intensive case study involving 21 hospitals across all seven Welsh health boards. We focused on the local implementation of three focal interventions from the 1000 Lives+patient safety programme: Improving Leadership for Quality Improvement, Reducing Surgical Complications and Reducing Health-care Associated Infection. Our main sources of data were 160 semistructured interviews, observation and 1700 health policy and organisational documents. These data were analysed using the realist approaches of abstraction, abduction and retroduction.

Setting

Welsh Government and NHS Wales.

Participants

Interviews were conducted with 160 participants including government policy leads, health managers and professionals, partner agencies with strategic oversight of patient safety, advocacy groups and academics with expertise in patient safety.

Main outcome measures

Identification of the contextual factors pertinent to the local implementation of the 1000 Lives+patient safety programme in Welsh NHS hospitals.

Results

An innovative conceptual framework harnessing realist social theory and institutional theory was produced to address challenges identified within previous applications of realist inquiry in patient safety research. This involved the development and use of an explanatory intervention–context–mechanism–agency–outcome (I-CMAO) configuration to illustrate the processes behind implementation of a change programme. Our findings, illustrated by multiple nested I-CMAO configurations, show how local implementation of patient safety interventions are impacted and modified by particular aspects of context: specifically, isomorphism, by which an intervention becomes adapted to the environment in which it is implemented; institutional logics, the beliefs and values underpinning the intervention and its source, and their perceived legitimacy among different groups of health-care professionals; and the relational structure and power dynamics of the functional group, that is, those tasked with implementing the initiative. This dynamic interplay shapes and guides actions leading to the normalisation or the rejection of the patient safety programme.

Conclusions

Heightened awareness of the influence of context on the local implementation of patient safety programmes is required to inform the design of such interventions and to ensure their effective implementation and operationalisation in the day-to-day practice of health-care teams. Future work is required to elaborate our conceptual model and findings in similar settings where different interventions are introduced, and in different settings where similar innovations are implemented.

Funding

The National Institute for Health Research Health Services and Delivery Research programme.

Endoscopic endonasal transsphenoidal surgery: implementation of an operative and perioperative checklist

Endoscopic endonasal surgery relies heavily on specialized operative instrumentation and optimization of endocrinological and other critical adjunctive intraoperative factors. Several studies and worldwide initiatives have previously established that intraoperative and perioperative surgical checklists can minimize the incidence of and prevent adverse events. The aim of this article was to outline some of the most common considerations in the perioperative and intraoperative preparation for endoscopic endonasal transsphenoidal surgery. The authors implemented and prospectively evaluated a customized checklist at their institution in 25 endoscopic endonasal operations for a variety of sellar and skull base pathological entities. Although no major errors were detected, near misses pertaining primarily to missing components of surgical equipment or instruments were identified in 9 cases (36%). The considerations in the checklist provided in this article can serve as a basic template for further customization by centers performing endoscopic endonasal surgery, where their application may reduce the incidence of adverse or preventable errors associated with surgical treatment of sellar and skull base lesions.

Adverse events in neurosurgery and their relationship to quality improvement

Adverse events are common in neurosurgery. Their reporting is inconsistent and widely variable due to nonuniform definitions, data collection mechanisms, and retrospective data collection. Historically, neurosurgery has lagged behind general and cardiac surgical fields in the creation of multi-institutional prospective databases allowing for benchmarking and accurate adverse event/outcomes measurement, the bedrock of evidence used to guide quality improvement initiatives. The National Neurosurgery Quality and Outcomes Database has begun to address this issue by collecting prospective, multi-institutional outcomes data in neurosurgical patients. Once reliable outcomes exist, various targeted quality improvement strategies may be used to reduce adverse events and improve outcomes.

Neurosurgical checklists: a review

Morbidity due to avoidable medical errors is a crippling reality intrinsic to health care. In particular, iatrogenic surgical errors lead to significant morbidity, decreased quality of life, and attendant costs. In recent decades there has been an increased focus on health care quality improvement, with a concomitant focus on mitigating avoidable medical errors. The most notable tool developed to this end is the surgical checklist. Checklists have been implemented in various operating rooms internationally, with overwhelmingly positive results. Comparatively, the field of neurosurgery has only minimally addressed the utility of checklists as a health care improvement measure. Literature on the use of checklists in this field has been sparse. Considering the widespread efficacy of this tool in other fields, the authors seek to raise neurosurgical awareness regarding checklists by reviewing the current literature.