Study: Surgical checklists may not lead to better outcomes

A new study published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that hospitals that began using World Health Organization (WHO)-designed surgical safety checklists did not see significant reductions in mortality or complications.

 

Funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the study examined 101 acute care hospitals in Ontario that had adopted surgical safety checklists. Researchers looked at three-month periods before and after adoption of a checklist program to determine the risk of death and surgical complications before implementation and afterward. In 2009, the Journal published a study that found that the checklist led to a 47% reduction in deaths associated with high-risk surgeries, according to Outpatient Surgery Magazine.

 

Read the study here.