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Checklists, Surgical Timeout, Briefing, and Debriefing: Safety in the Operating Room

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The SAGES Manual of Quality, Outcomes and Patient Safety

Abstract

Operating rooms consist of high-stress, complex environments, which creates a propensity for serious errors. In order to improve patient safety, several strategies can be implemented. By executing a timeout before and after the planned procedure, one can significantly decrease the number of wrong site surgeries and retained foreign bodies. In addition, checklists help remind a team of people of the minimum, routine steps required and can help close the loop in communication and verify that pivotal jobs have indeed been completed. Briefing and debriefing can also help to improve the communication of the surgical team by setting expectations and verifying that everyone understands the planned strategy for the day. This small investment of time and energy has the potential to prevent devastating complications.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Surgery, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA

    Amelia T. Collings & Dimitrios Stefanidis

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  1. Amelia T. Collings
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  2. Dimitrios Stefanidis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Amelia T. Collings .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Surgery, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School - Baystate, Medical Center, Springfield, MA, USA

    John R. Romanelli

  2. Department of Surgery, Inova Fairfax Medical Campus, Falls Church, VA, USA

    Jonathan M. Dort

  3. Department of Surgery, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York, NY, USA

    Rebecca B. Kowalski

  4. Department of Surgery, NYU Langone Medical Center, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Prashant Sinha

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Collings, A.T., Stefanidis, D. (2022). Checklists, Surgical Timeout, Briefing, and Debriefing: Safety in the Operating Room. In: Romanelli, J.R., Dort, J.M., Kowalski, R.B., Sinha, P. (eds) The SAGES Manual of Quality, Outcomes and Patient Safety. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94610-4_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94610-4_22

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-94609-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-94610-4

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