Does a surgical ward round checklist improve patient safety and clinical documentation?
Implementation of a surgical ward round checklist improves clinical documentation, communication, and patient safety.
The introduction of the surgical WR checklist has improved documentation of key aspects of patient care. The WR checklist benefits patient safety. It improves communication, documentation and ensures that key issues are not missed at patient assessment on WRs. A crucial factor for successful documentation is engagement by the senior clinicians and nursing staff on its benefits which ensures appropriate use of WR checklist labels occurs as doctors rotate through the surgical placement.
Krishnamohan et al. (Sun,) studied this question.