Impact of the time-out process on safety attitude in a tertiary neurosurgical department

Boosting teamwork between scrub nurses and neurosurgeons: exploring the value of a role-played hands-on, cadaver-free simulation and systematic review of the literature

Background

Recently, non-technical skills (NTS) and teamwork in particular have been demonstrated to be essential in many jobs, in business as well as in medical specialties, including plastic, orthopedic, and general surgery. However, NTS and teamwork in neurosurgery have not yet been fully studied. We reviewed the relevant literature and designed a mock surgery to be used as a team-building activity specifically designed for scrub nurses and neurosurgeons.

Methods

We conducted a systematic review by searching PubMed (Medline) and CINAHL, including relevant articles in English published until 15 July 2023. Then, we proposed a pilot study consisting of a single-session, hands-on, and cadaver-free activity, based on role play. Scrub nurses were administered the SPLINTS (Scrub Practitioners' List of Intraoperative Non-Technical Skills) rating form as a self-evaluation at baseline and 20-30 days after the simulation. During the experiment, surgeons and scrub nurses role-played as each other, doing exercises including a simulated glioma resection surgery performed on an advanced model of a cerebral tumor (Tumor Box, UpSurgeOn®) under an exoscope. At the end, every participant completed an evaluation questionnaire.

Results

A limited number of articles are available on the topic. This study reports one of the first neurosurgical team-building activities in the literature. All the participating scrub nurses and neurosurgeons positively evaluated the simulation developed on a roleplay. The use of a physical simulator seems an added value, as the tactile feedback given by the model further helps to understand the actual surgical job, more than only observing and assisting. The SPLINTS showed a statistically significant improvement not only in "Communication and Teamwork" (p = 0.048) but also in "Situation Awareness" (p = 0.031).

Conclusion

Our study suggests that team-building activities may play a role in improving interprofessional teamwork and other NTS in neurosurgery.

Compliance with the World Health Organization's surgical safety checklist and related postoperative outcomes: a nationwide survey among 172 health facilities in Ethiopia

Background

Ministry of Health (MOH) of Ethiopia adopted World Health Organization’s evidence-proven surgical safety checklist (SSC) to reduce the occurrence of surgical complications, i.e., death, disability and prolong hospitalization. MOH commissioned this evaluation to learn about SSC completeness and compliance, and its effect on magnitude of surgical complications.

Methods

Health institution-based cross-sectional study with retrospective surgical chart audit was used to evaluate SSC utilization in 172 public and private health facilities in Ethiopia, December 2020–May 2021. A total of 1720 major emergency and elective surgeries in 172 (140 public and 32 private) facilities were recruited for chart review by an experienced team of surgical clinicians. A pre-tested tool was used to abstract data from patient charts and national database. Analyzed descriptive, univariable and bivariable data using Stata version-15 statistical software.

Results

In 172 public and private health facilities across Ethiopia, 1603 of 1720 (93.2%) patient charts were audited; representations of public and private facilities were 81.4% (n = 140) and 18.6% (n = 32), respectively. Of surgeries that utilized SSC (67.6%, 1083 of 1603), the proportion of SSC that were filled completely and correctly were 60.8% (659 of 1083). Surgeries compliant to SSC guide achieved a statistically significant reduction in perioperative mortality (P = 0.002) and anesthesia adverse events (P = 0.005), but not in Surgical Site Infection (P = 0.086). Non-compliant surgeries neither utilized SSC nor completed the SSC correctly, 58.9% (944 of 1603).

Conclusions

Surgeries that adhered to the SSC achieved a statistically significant reduction in perioperative complications, including mortality. Disappointingly, a significant number of surgeries (58.9%) failed to adhere to SSC, a missed opportunity for reducing complications.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13037-022-00329-6.

Intraoperative practices to prevent wrong-level spine surgery: a survey among 105 spine surgeons in the United Kingdom

Background

Current literature suggests that wrong-level spine surgery is relatively common with far-reaching consequences. This study aims to assess the current practices of spinal surgeons across the UK with respect to the techniques implemented for correct level verification.

Methods

To assess the current practices of spinal surgeons across the UK with respect to the techniques implemented for level verification. The authors hypothesise the absence of a standardised technique used across spine surgeons in the UK. Practices amongst respondents will be ascertained via an electronic questionnaire designed to evaluate current practices of spinal surgeons whom are members of the British Association of Spinal Surgeons (BASS). The study data will include key information such as; the level of surgical experience, specific techniques used to perform level checks for each procedure and prior involvement with wrong-level spine surgery. Responses were collected over the period of 1 month with a reminder sent 2 weeks prior to closure of the survey. The data were collated and descriptive analyses performed on multiple-choice question answers and common themes established from free text answers.

Results

A total of 27% (n = 105/383) members responded. The vast majority had greater than 10 years’ experience. Intraoperative practices varied greatly with varying practices present for cervical, thoracic and lumbar level surgery. Only 38% (n = 40) of respondents re-checked the level intra-operatively, prior to instrumentation. Of the respondents 47.5% (n = 29/61) of surgeons had been involved in wrong level spinal surgery.

Conclusion

This study highlights the varying practices amongst spinal surgeons and suggests root cause for wrong-level spine surgery; where the level identified pre-incision was subsequently not the level exposed. We describe a novel safety-check adopted at our institute using concepts and lessons learnt from the WHO Checklist.

Handoffs in Radiology: Minimizing Communication Errors and Improving Care Transitions

Handoffs are essential to achieving safe care transitions. In radiology practice, frequent transitions of care responsibility among clinicians, radiologists, and patients occur between moments of care such as determining protocol, imaging, interpreting, and consulting. Continuity of care is maintained across these transitions with handoffs, which are the process of communicating patient information and transferring decision-making responsibility. As a leading cause of medical error, handoffs are a major communication challenge that is exceedingly common in both diagnostic and interventional radiology practice. The frequency of handoffs in radiology underscores the importance of using evidence-based strategies to improve patient safety in the radiology department. In this article, reliability science principles and handoff improvement tools are adapted to provide radiology-focused strategies at individual, team, and organizational levels with the goal of minimizing handoff errors and improving care transitions.

Time-Out and Its Role in Neurosurgery

BACKGROUND

Safety checklists have improved surgical outcomes; however, much of the literature comes from general surgery.

OBJECTIVE

To identify the role of time-outs in neurosurgery, understand neurosurgeons' attitudes toward time-out, and highlight areas for improvement.

METHODS

A cross-sectional study using a 15-item survey to evaluate how time-outs were performed across 5 hospitals affiliated with a single neurosurgery training program.

RESULTS

Surveys were sent to 51 neurosurgical faculty, fellows, and residents across 5 hospitals with a 72.5% response rate. At all hospitals, surgeons, anesthesiologists, registered nurses, and circulators were involved in time-outs. Although all required time-out before incision, there was no consensus regarding the precise timing of time-out, in policy or in practice. Overall, respondents believed the existing time-out was adequate for neurosurgical procedures (H1: 17, 65.4%; H2: 19, 86.4%; H3: 14, 70.0%; H4: 20, 80.0%; and H5: 18, 78.3%). Of the respondents, 97.2% believed time-out made surgery safe, 94.6% agreed that time-outs reduce the risk of wrong-side or wrong-level neurosurgery, and 17 (45.9%) saw a role for a neurosurgery-specific safety checklist. Pragmatic challenges (n = 20, 54.1%) and individual beliefs and attitudes (n = 20, 54.1%) were common barriers to implementation of standardized time-outs.

CONCLUSION

Multidisciplinary time-outs have become standard of care in neurosurgery. Despite proximity and overlapping personnel, there is considerable variability between hospitals in the practice of time-outs. This lack of uniformity, allowed for by flexible World Health Organization guidelines, may reflect the origins of surgical time-outs in general surgery, rather than neurosurgery, underscoring the potential for time-out optimization with neurosurgery-specific considerations.

How Much and What Local Adaptation Is Acceptable? A Comparison of 24 Surgical Safety Checklists in Switzerland

OBJECTIVES

In 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) published the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist, and 3 years later, the Swiss Patient Safety Foundation adapted it for Switzerland. Several meta-analyses and systematic reviews showed ambiguous results on the effectiveness of surgical checklists. Most of them assume that the study checklists are almost identical, but in fact they are quite heterogeneous due to adaptations to local settings. This study aims to investigate the extent to which the checklists currently used in Switzerland differ and to discuss the consequences of local adaptations.

METHODS

For the analysis, 24 checklists used in 18 Swiss hospitals are analyzed. First, general checklist characteristics are examined. Second, the checklist items are compared with the checklist items of the WHO and the Swiss Patient Safety Foundation.

RESULTS

The checklists contain a median of 34.5 items (range, 15-76). Compared with the checklists of WHO and Patient Safety Switzerland, which contain 12 and 21 process checks and 10 and 9 conversation prompts, respectively, the study checklists contain a median of 15.5 process checks (range, 3-25) and a median of 4 conversation prompts (range, 0-10).

CONCLUSIONS

There are major differences between the study checklists and the reference checklists that raise doubts about the comparability of checklists. More resources must be invested in proper checklist adaptions and better guidance on how to adapt safety tools such as the surgical safety checklist needed to local conditions. In any case, details of the checklists used need to be clearly described in studies on checklist effectiveness.

Interventions to improve team effectiveness within health care: a systematic review of the past decade

BACKGROUND

A high variety of team interventions aims to improve team performance outcomes. In 2008, we conducted a systematic review to provide an overview of the scientific studies focused on these interventions. However, over the past decade, the literature on team interventions has rapidly evolved. An updated overview is therefore required, and it will focus on all possible team interventions without restrictions to a type of intervention, setting, or research design.

OBJECTIVES

To review the literature from the past decade on interventions with the goal of improving team effectiveness within healthcare organizations and identify the "evidence base" levels of the research.

METHODS

Seven major databases were systematically searched for relevant articles published between 2008 and July 2018. Of the original search yield of 6025 studies, 297 studies met the inclusion criteria according to three independent authors and were subsequently included for analysis. The Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation Scale was used to assess the level of empirical evidence.

RESULTS

Three types of interventions were distinguished: (1) Training, which is sub-divided into training that is based on predefined principles (i.e. CRM: crew resource management and TeamSTEPPS: Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety), on a specific method (i.e. simulation), or on general team training. (2) Tools covers tools that structure (i.e. SBAR: Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation, (de)briefing checklists, and rounds), facilitate (through communication technology), or trigger (through monitoring and feedback) teamwork. (3) Organizational (re)design is about (re)designing structures to stimulate team processes and team functioning. (4) A programme is a combination of the previous types. The majority of studies evaluated a training focused on the (acute) hospital care setting. Most of the evaluated interventions focused on improving non-technical skills and provided evidence of improvements.

CONCLUSION

Over the last decade, the number of studies on team interventions has increased exponentially. At the same time, research tends to focus on certain interventions, settings, and/or outcomes. Principle-based training (i.e. CRM and TeamSTEPPS) and simulation-based training seem to provide the greatest opportunities for reaching the improvement goals in team functioning.

Guideline Implementation: Team Communication: 1.8 www.aornjournal.org/content/cme

The perioperative environment is fast paced and complex. Competing responsibilities, noise and distractions, and reluctance of team members to speak up when they are aware of a potential patient safety issue are all barriers to effective communication in the perioperative setting. Communication breakdowns among health care providers can lead to medical errors and patient harm. Accurate and complete communication about the patient and the patient's care can contribute to improved efficiency, better patient outcomes, and fewer adverse events. The new AORN "Guideline for team communication" provides guidance on using standardized processes and tools to improve the quality of team communication. The key points address hand overs between phases of perioperative care; a briefing to share the surgical plan; a time out to verify the correct patient, procedure, site, and side; and a debriefing to discuss what was learned and how to improve. Perioperative RNs should review the complete guideline for additional information and for guidance when writing and updating policies and procedures.

The Need for Surgical Safety Checklists in Neurosurgery Now and in the Future-A Systematic Review

Safety checklists have been studied among various surgical patient groups, but evidence of their benefits in neurosurgery remains sparse. Since the implementation of the World Health Organization's Surgical Safety Checklist, their use has become widespread. The aim of this review was to systematically review the state of the literature on surgical safety checklists in neurosurgery. Also, in the new era of robotics and artificial intelligence, there is a need to re-evaluate patient safety procedures in neurosurgery. A systematic review was conducted on PubMed, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Embase, and MEDLINE for articles published between 2008 and 2016 using MeSH (medical subject heading) terms and keywords describing postoperative complications and surgical adverse events, and some additional searches were carried out until January 2019. Twenty-six original studies or reviews were eligible for this review. They were categorized into studies with patient-related outcomes, personnel-related outcomes, or previous reviews. Checklist use in neurosurgery was found to reduce hospital-acquired infectious complications and to enhance operating room safety culture. Checklists seem to improve patient safety in neurosurgery, although the amount of evidence is still limited. Despite their shortcomings, checklists are here to stay, and new research is required to update checklists to meet the requirements of the transforming working environment of the neurosurgery operating room.

Analysis of hospital infection register indicates that the implementation of WHO surgical safety checklist has an impact on early postoperative neurosurgical infections

WHO surgical safety checklist has been proven to reduce postoperative infections in several studies. The aim of our study was to focus on surgical site infections (SSIs) after neurosurgical operations, and to determine whether the checklist implementation would have an impact on the reported SSIs. We used hospital-acquired infection (HAI) register to evaluate the effects of WHO surgical safety checklist in neurosurgery. The HAI register was searched for superficial and deep SSIs, deep organ SSIs, infections following orthopaedic implantation, and other surgical infections of 4678 neurosurgical patients operated on between 2007 and 2011. The data analysis consisted of 95 and 104 neurosurgical postoperative infections before and after the checklist implementation. Time from operation to infection was shorter before than after checklist implementation (p = 0.039), indicating a positive effect of the checklist use in the onset of early HAIs. The overall incidence of SSIs of all neurosurgical patients did not differ (4.1% and 4.5%, respectively) and no differences were noticed in the incidences of the subgroups of superficial SSIs, deep SSIs, and deep organ SSIs. The reduction in early postoperative infection rate along with checklist implementation, but not in the long run indicates the complexity of preventing HAIs in neurosurgical patients and need for a multistep infection control approach.

Use of patient safety culture instruments in operating rooms: A systematic literature review

OBJECTIVE

To identify and qualitatively describe, in a literature review, how the instruments were used to evaluate patient safety culture in the operating rooms of published studies.

METHODS

Systematic searches of the literature were conducted using the major database including MEDLINE, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, and four Chinese databases including Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), Wanfang Data, Chinese Scientific Journal Database (VIP), and Chinese Journals Full-text Database (CNKI) for studies published up to March 2016. We summarized and analyzed the country scope, the instrument utilized in the study, the year when the instrument was used, and fields of operating rooms. Study populations, study settings, and the time span between baseline and follow-up phase were evaluated according to the study design.

RESULTS

We identified 1025 references, of which 99 were obtained for full-text assessment; 47 of these studies were deemed relevant and included in the literature review. Most of the studies were from the USA. The most commonly used patient safety culture instrument was Safety Attitude Questionnaire. All identified instruments were used after 2002 and across many fields. Most included studies on patient safety culture were conducted in teaching hospitals or university hospitals. The study population in the cross-sectional studies was much more than that in the before-after studies. The time span between baseline and follow-up phase of before-after studies were almost over three months.

CONCLUSION

Although patient safety culture is considered important in health care and patient safety, the number of studies in which patient safety culture has been estimated using the instruments in operating rooms, is fairly small.

Quality Indicators in Cranial Neurosurgery: Which Are Presently Substantiated? A Systematic Review

BACKGROUND

Owing to the rising costs of health care delivery, the quality of delivered care has become a central issue across all medical specialties. Consequently, there is increasing pressure to create standardized frameworks for measuring quality of care. In the field of cranial neurosurgery, health care administrators have begun applying quality measures that are easily available but might be inaccurate in measuring the quality of care.

METHODS

We performed a systematic literature review on quality indicators (QIs) that are presently used in this field, aiming to elucidate which QIs are scientifically founded and thus potentially justifiable as measures of quality. We found a total of 8 QIs, and methodologically evaluated published studies according to the AIRE (Appraisal of Indicators through Research and Evaluation) criteria. These criteria include length of hospital stay, all-cause readmission rate, and unplanned reoperation rate.

RESULTS

Our review indicates that these presently used or proposed QIs for neurosurgery lack scientific rigor and are restricted to rudimentary measures, and that further research is necessary.

CONCLUSIONS

Neurosurgeons need to define their own QIs and actively participate in the validation of these QIs to provide the best possible patient outcomes. More reliable clinical registries, obligatory for all neurosurgical services, should be established as a basis for establishing such indicators, with risk adjustment being an important element of any such indicators.