Trivia: The WHO's "Safe Surgery Saves Lives" Initiative

On June 25, 2008, the World Health Organization launched a new Safe Surgery Saves Lives initiative, which is a collaborative effort led by the Harvard School of Public Health, and which aims to help make surgery safer around the world.

Some surgery facts from the WHO:

• Globally, about 234 million major surgical operations are conducted a year, which means about one operation for every 25 people. (See the article published in The Lancet on June 25, 2008.)

• Every year, 63 million people undergo surgery to treat traumatic injuries, 10 million undergo surgery for pregnancy-related complications, and 31 million undergo surgery for treating cancers.

• Studies suggest that complications following surgery result in disability or prolonged stay in 3% to 25% of hospitalized patients, depending upon complexity of surgery and hospital setting.

• Rates of death following major surgery are reported to be between 0.4% and 10%, depending on the setting. Therefore, at least one million patients would die every year during or after an operation.

• In the developed world, nearly half of all harmful events (e.g., miscommunication, wrong medication, and technical errors) affecting patients in hospitals are related to surgical care and services. The evidence suggests that at least half of these events are preventable if standards of care are adhered to and safety tools, such as checklists, are used.

To improve patient safety, the WHO is conducting a pilot evaluation of the "WHO Surgical Safety Checklist" at facilities in each of the WHO's six regions: African Region (St. Francis Designated District Hospital, Ifakara, United Republic of Tanzania); Americas Region (University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle, USA, and University Health Network, Toronto, Canada); Eastern Mediterranean Region (Prince Hamzah Hospital, Amman, Jordan); European Region (St Mary's Hospital, London, UK); South East Asian Region (St. Stephen's Hospital, New Delhi, India); Western Pacific Region (Auckland City Hospital, New Zealand, and Philippines General Hospital, Manila).

The first edition of the WHO's Surgical Safety Checklist and implementation manual are available for download on the WHO website, and a final version of the checklist will be available by the end of 2008, once the evaluation of the eight pilot studies is complete.

The checklist includes three phases: sign-in (before anesthesia), which includes checking patient identity, procedure, and site, anesthesia safety measures, patient's allergy status, etc.; time out (before incision), which includes confirming team members have introduced themselves, team members verbally confirming patient, site, procedure, etc.; and sign out (before patient leaves the OR), which includes the nurse confirming with the team the name of the procedure recorded, that instrument/sponge/needle counts are correct, etc.

Also see: Trivia: Patient Safety, Trivia: Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study, and Surgical Errors.

Trivia: The WHO's "Safe Surgery Saves Lives" Initiative

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