Compliance of health care providers with perioperative patient safety guidelines in a general hospital in Cairo

Background: Perioperative patient safety became an utmost priority all over the world. Commitment of the health care providers (HCPs) to patient safety guidelines can decrease the rate of perioperative morbidity and mortality. Objective: This work aims to assess the degree of compliance of health care providers - in Police hospital in Cairo- with the patient safety guidelines and to study the effect of work load on degree of compliance. Materials And Methods: A descriptive study was conducted on 305 patients who had undergone surgeries in 3 operating rooms of Police hospital in Cairo during duration 3 months from 16-4-2014 till 14-7-2014.WHO safe surgery checklist was used to check if health care providers were compliant to its items or not. Results: Health care providers in operation rooms of Police hospital in Cairo showed compliance with the WHO safe surgery checklist items as the following: mean compliance of the Sum ―Total score‖ is (73.85 %) while the stage of the highest mean was stage I ―sign in‖ with mean (81.66%) and the stage with the lowest mean was stage II ―SSI bundle‖ with mean (52%). Stage III ―time out‖ & stage IV ―sign out‖ shows mean compliance of 74.94 % & 67.05% respectively. Providers with higher work load had lower compliance with some safety items. Conclusion: Health care providers working in the operation rooms of police hospital in Cairo show aspects of low compliance with the WHO safe surgery checklist , they need to be aware of the importance of patient safety guidelines and to put a plan to increase their compliance in Police hospital in Cairo with the WHO safe surgery checklist. Decreasing workload can improve compliance regarding some safety items