The Safe Surgery Saves Lives initiative was established by the World Alliance for Patient Safety as part of the World Health Organization's efforts to reduce the number of surgical deaths across the world. The aim of this initiative is to harness political commitment and clinical will to address important safety issues, including inadequate anaesthetic safety practices, avoidable surgical infection and poor communication among team members. These have proved to be common, deadly and preventable problems in all countries and settings.

To assist operating teams in reducing the number of these events, the Alliance - in consultation with surgeons, anaesthesiologists, nurses, patient safety experts and patients around the world - has identified a set of safety checks that could be performed in any operating room. The aim of the resulting WHO Surgical Safety Checklist First Edition (available at www.who.int/patientsafety/challenge/safe.surgery/en/index.html) is to reinforce accepted safety practices and foster better communication and teamwork between clinical disciplines. The Checklist is not a regulatory device or a component of official policy; it is intended as a tool for use by clinicians interested in improving the safety of their operations and reducing unnecessary surgical deaths and complications.

Safe Surgery

Operating Room Audit Project (ORAP)

This project has been prepared to help surgical teams assess their operating rooms and safe surgical practices. The project is based on the WHO Guideline for Safe Surgery which recommends 10 standards to ensure safe surgical practice that will also optimize surgical outcome. The standards can be implemented and maintained through the use of the Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC). However, to guarantee the successful use of the SSC a minimum of resources and safe practices have to be introduced into the operating rooms. This requires that the core structure and processes mentioned in WHO Guideline for Safe Surgery be introduced and indorsed by all members of the surgical team.

As a first step, a situation analysis must be performed to assess the current situation in the operating rooms. This is usually done through auditing the structure and practices performed in the operating rooms. In this project audit will cover operating room essential equipment, human resources, and compliance of staff with safe practices as stated in the WHO Guideline for Safe Surgery.

A sound operating room structure with safe surgical processes is expected to yield improved surgical outcome. Surgical outcome is measured using several quantitative parameters that can be found in 10th standard of the WHO Guideline for Safe Surgery related to surveillance of surgical capacity, volume and results.

The project related documents include the 10 standards for Safe Surgery (recommendations) derived from the WHO Guideline for Safe Surgery and related audit criteria (as defined by APSA), the audit form (created by APSA), and the surgical safety checklist (translated by APSA). The audit form has five sections covering background information on the operating rooms and staff, policies and procedures, essential equipment and tools for each operating room, safe practices as observed during the patient surgical pathway, and patient medical records.

Thank you

Alexandria Patient Safety Alliance (APSA)

Downloads

• WHO standard for safe surgery and audit criteria
• Audit sheet
• Surgical safety checklist