Effect of Comprehensive Surgical Safety System on Patients' Outcome: A Prospective Clinical Study

Background Patient safety has become an integral part of hospital management to prevent catastrophic events which adversely affects the patients, care providers and the hospital. Surgical Checklists are an easy and simple way to prevent surgical errors and complications. Objective This prospective study is to evaluate the effect of SURPASS (Surgical Patient Safety System) checklist on the outcome of the patients who underwent surgery in our hospital. Methods All the patients who underwent surgery in the sixth unit of Department of Surgery from April 2014 to May 2015 were included in the study excluding those aged above 13 years and day care surgery cases. For the control group (initial six months) no checklist was implemented whereas for the study group (next six months) SURPASS checklist was implemented. Data collected on age, sex, diagnosis, surgical procedure, type of anaesthesia, number and type of postoperative complications, need of second surgery because of complications, length of hospital stay and outcome (discharge, disability or death). Mann-Whitney U test and Fisher's exact test were used for analysis. Results Of the total 372 patients operated, 200 were before and 172 were after implementation of SURPASS checklist. Before implementation of the checklist, complications were noticed in 66.66% of elective and 77.23% of emergency cases. Whereas after implementation of checklist the complications in elective cases were found to be 51.09% (p-value = 0.008) and 67.50% (p-value = 0.024) in emergency cases. Conclusion Implementation of SURPASS checklist is effective in reducing the rate of postoperative complications in both elective and emergency surgeries.