Why the study?
Although compliance with the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist and Team Brief has improved, gaps in knowledge remained regarding the perioperative Team Brief.
While quantitative compliance with perioperative Team Briefs is high, further research is needed to standardize and improve their qualitative effectiveness.
Inconsistencies in Team Brief quality warrant caution despite high compliance; leaves open standardization and effectiveness research.
The World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist has been the subject of many professional discussions following its introduction in 2008. Since the addition of the Team Brief and Debrief in 2010 and the acceptance of the Five Steps to Safer Surgery as the gold standard, compliance has steadily improved (as audited by Care Quality Commission Inspections). This review of the literature therefore examined the perioperative Team Brief and identified gaps in knowledge. Evidence appears to suggest that whilst compliance is good in quantitative terms, there may be inconsistencies within the quality of Team Briefs from organisation to organisation and surgeon to surgeon. Concluding further research is required to establish what an effective Team Brief looks, sounds and feels like to all involved.
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Pennington et al. (2019) studied this question.
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