Does the World Health Organization's Surgical Safety Checklist (WHO SSC) reduce surgical complications and enhance safety cultures in diverse healthcare settings?
The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist improves surgical outcomes, but its effectiveness depends heavily on optimized adaptation and contextual application, especially in low-resource settings.
This systematic review evaluates the impact and implementation strategies of the World Health Organization's Surgical Safety Checklist (WHO SSC) across diverse healthcare settings since its introduction in 2008. Our comprehensive analysis synthesizes findings from various study designs, including randomized controlled trials, qualitative studies, and meta-analyses, focusing on the checklist's effectiveness in reducing surgical complications and enhancing safety cultures within surgical teams. Despite its widespread endorsement and documented benefits, the review highlights significant variability in implementation quality and adherence, influenced by cultural, institutional, and procedural factors. The findings suggest that optimized adaptation and contextual application of the WHO SSC are crucial for maximizing its clinical benefits, particularly in low-resource settings. This review not only confirms the checklist's efficacy in improving surgical outcomes but also underscores the need for evidence-based strategies to enhance its global implementation and effectiveness.
Alsadoun et al. (2024) studied this question.