[Results of recent patient safety work in the surgical disciplines]

Swedish surgical care shows high quality and patient safety. The reasons for this are several; among the most important are a generally well-educated staff and nation-wide quality registers. Areas in need of development are improved risk assessment and risk management, both for individual patients and for specific types of operations. The ability of the surgical team to synthesize information on what has been done and what should be done postoperatively and communicate this to the teams that take care of the patients after surgery needs further honing. This could result in decreased failure-to-rescue in the postoperative period. Also, strengthening of teamwork and team performance is needed. As new knowledge on the detrimental effects of rude behaviour emerges, it becomes obvious that further work to diminish this is needed. Research is under way of identifying the possibility to identify good and safe surgeons already at the start of their education.