Staff attitudes to and compliance with the use of a surgical safety checklist

To investigate staff attitudes to the use of a surgical safety checklist in a small animal operating room and to gain insight into barriers to use.

A questionnaire was designed and used to assess attitudes of 36 operating room personnel to the checklist. The checklist was retrospectively audited on 984 patients over an 8-month period to investigate compliance.

Responses were obtained from 100% of operating room personnel. Attitudes to the checklist were positive, with 83.4% agreeing that it improved teamwork and 100% agreed that the checklist improved patient safety, reduced error and was best practice. Most personnel (94%) believed that a completed checklist was used for every procedure. Several barriers were highlighted, including issues of hierarchy and team-working and lack of training. 984 checklists were used during the study period with 83 (8.4%) being fully completed.

Surgical safety checklists have potential to improve patient safety in veterinary operating rooms. However, appropriate design and implementation are critical and surgeons should endeavour to support checklist use.