Checklists should be used in hospitals

Safety checklist

Calls are being made for checklists to be used more widely in hospitals to improve safety. Using safety checklists in routine clinical practice would help nurses improve care across a range of key areas, according to a national patient safety campaign.

International Federation of Perioperative Nurses president Jane Reid said errors in healthcare were often to do with human factors and "non-technical" skills such as communication, situational awareness and leadership.

Reid who has led the Patient Safety First Campaign, has highlighted tools such as the World Health Organization's safer surgery checklist as proven means of reducing human error.

WHO Surgical Safety Checklist

The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist has improved compliance with standards and decreased complications from surgery in eight pilot hospitals where is was evaluated.

The Safe Surgery Saves Lives programme was established by WHO Patient Safety as part of the World Health Organization's efforts to reduce the number of surgical deaths across the globe.

The aim of the checklist is to reinforce accepted safety practices and foster better communication and teamwork between clinical disciplines.

Reid said similar checklists had the potential to improve communication and team working across other areas of nursing practice, resulting in improvements in fundamental areas such as nutrition and pressure area care.

"In complex healthcare environments there is always the risk of assuming that 'somebody else has done it'. The safer surgery checklist requires everybody to stop at a point in the patient pathway and ask a number of safety critical questions to ensure that critical elements [of care] have been carried out."

She said: "It is about improving communication and the reliability of care that patients receive. For example, we know that if a patient is well nourished, well hydrated, on the right mattress and turned regularly they will not get a pressure sore, or their potential to get a pressure sore is significantly reduced.

"So if they develop a pressure sore that means that one of these things has not been reliably and consistently given to that patient."

Reid spoke to Nursing Times ahead of next week's launch of the "human factors" initiative, the second of four dedicated focus weeks designed by Patient Safety First to help trusts eliminate avoidable death and harm to patients.

Spread of disease

Taking checklists to another level could help with the spread of the likes of MRSA. WHO already produces information on items such as hand hygiene, which is important as thousands of people die every day around the world from infections acquired while receiving healthcare.

Any healthcare worker, caregiver or person involved in direct or indirect patient care needs to be concerned about hand hygiene and should be able to perform it correctly and at the right time.

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