Authors:
Vanessa Estima
1
;
Ana Castro
2
;
Pedro Gomes
3
;
Victor Nunes
4
and
Daniel Pereira
5
Affiliations:
1
Instituto Politécnico do Porto, Portugal
;
2
Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, Portugal
;
3
Universidade do Porto, Portugal
;
4
Hospital Prof. Doutor Fernando Fonseca, Portugal
;
5
Universidade do Porto and Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Surgical Safety Checklist, Evaluation and use of Healthcare IT, Electronic Health Records and Standards, e-Health.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Biomedical Engineering
;
Cloud Computing
;
e-Health
;
Electronic Health Records and Standards
;
Evaluation and Use of Healthcare IT
;
Health Information Systems
;
Platforms and Applications
Abstract:
To improve safety, and to reduce the mortality and complication rates during surgeries, the World Health
Organization developed the Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC). The SSC has been recently implemented in
Portuguese hospitals and we have performed an observational study where several health professionals were
observed during their normal surgical routine and interviewed. The objective of this study was to understand
the current use of the SSC, and how it may be improved in terms of usability, taking advantage of current
technological advancements. During two days, in a public health center in Portugal, a clinical team (surgeons,
anesthesiologists and nurses) was observed in 14 surgeries. Some observations disclose that several health
professionals are not familiarized with the SSC guidelines, which demonstrates that it is urgent to change the
mindset of health professionals, and that the addition of some features in the SSC may be necessary. With the
results of the observational stu
dy, we have designed and developed a web application for the SSC with new
functionalities to improve and aid the health professionals in its use.
(More)