Factors inhibiting the use of surgical safety checklist in hospitals: Literature review

The surgical safety checklist is a medical communication tool in the operating room that is recommended by WHO to minimize surgical errors. This tool has been introduced since 2008. However, until now, surgical errors have still been found in many hospitals worldwide. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the inhibiting factors in using surgical safety checklists in hospitals. The research method used was a literature review using the Preferred Reporting Item for Systematic Review and Meta-Analytic (PRISMA) analysis method. Article searches were conducted through the PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar databases using the keywords “patient safety incident” OR “adverse event” AND “surgical safety checklist” AND “barriers” AND “hospital.” The total number of articles found was 1.201, but only 9 met the inclusion criteria. The study was conducted in 93 hospitals in 9 countries and found several factors inhibiting surgical safety checklist implementation. Most inhibiting factors come from individual surgical staff and hospital organizations. The inhibiting factors in using surgical safety checklists in hospitals can be classified into 4 factors: the surgical safety checklist itself, individual factors, team factors, and organizational factors.