Assessing Operating Team Practices of Surgical Safety Measures Applied to Intraoperative Orthopedic Patients

Promoting patient safety is the fundamental role of health care, yet care-related adverseevents can be disastrous for patients, families and health settings. Surgical patient safety isstill challenge in operation, in spite of the development of the Universal Protocol. Objective:Assess orthopedic patients’ safety in the operating room. Setting: The operating rooms at El-Hadara University Hospital in Alexandria, Egypt. Subjects: 200 intra-operative patientsundergoing orthopedic surgery and all surgeons (N=10), anesthetists (N=4) and nurses(N=28). Tool: Surgical Safety Checklist administered to assess operating team practicescomprises a pre-operative verification process, sign in, time out, and sign out. Results: Thefindings revealed that the highest performance items of the operating team were related topatient ID, surgical site marked, patient consent, images, supplies, antibiotics given, andsterile instruments check; the worst performance items were assessing patient for risk ofexcessive blood loss and difficulty of airway or aspiration (62% and 57%,respectively).Reviewing the key concerns for recovery was undertaken for only 62% ofpatients. The results also imply that the differences between parts of surgical safety andpatients’ age, as well as types of surgeries, were statistically significant. Conclusion: Thehigh mean score of surgical safety applied by operating team was related to phase I(preoperative verification) and phase IV (sign out). Recommendations: The findingshighlight the need for using Surgical Safety Checklist in the operating room to maintain safetyculture and prevent complications.