through the entire SSC process. Table 1 summarizes
the observed procedures regarding the checklist use in
the two days.
In the two days of the observation, and of the 14
observed surgeries, only 2 surgeries met the require-
ments for the three phases of the SSC, as defined by
the WHO. Of the remaining 12 observed surgeries, 9
surgeries completed the last phase at the correct time.
The SSC was always filled by any of the nurses that
were available, except for a surgery in which a sur-
geon helped the nurses to fill one of the last phases.
It was also observed that only in 2 surgeries all
the phases of the SSC were read aloud to the team.
In the remaining surgeries, in 4 of them some of the
phases were read aloud and in 8 of them none of the
phases were read aloud to the team. We also observed
that, in 7 surgeries, several items were read aloud and
answered but no one was checking the SSC, only after
the end of the phase.
3.2 Interviews
I the end of the two days, several health professionals
and technicians (surgeons, circulating nurses, anes-
thesiologists and IT) were interviewed by the same
observer. Their opinions are presented in Table 2.
In general, the circulating nurses have the opinion
that the use of the SSC is very important, but reported
that not all health professionals involved collaborate
the same way. When the SSC became mandatory they
tried to follow with all the rules of the World Health
Organization (WHO), but due to lack of cooperation
of the surgical team, they decided to stop asking a few
items aloud, stating: “if the SSC was a team work, this
time would not be a waste, and its use would be im-
proved”. In their opinion, a mobile application would
not help to improve the functioning of the SSC. They
consider that the SSC could be adapted to each type
of surgery, for example, they consider that the iden-
tification of all team members by name and role, in
most of the Portuguese hospitals would be unneces-
sary, because usually the teams are known to each
other. Other example is the different materials used,
depending on the type of surgery that the SSC request
to confirm in the last phase.
The anesthesiologists were also in favor of the
SSC and in their opinion, the main reason for the low
commitment to not follow the rules according to the
WHO guidelines, is that nobody wants to be held re-
sponsible in case of a preventable complication: “it is
filled according to some of the rules but I admit that
not all of them, there is not a lot of rigour in its regis-
ter”. The anesthesiologists also do not find the use of
a mobile application a surplus value for the SSC, but
quite the opposite, stating that the adaptation of the
SSC would be a good improvement.
All the surgeons that have participated in the surg-
eries(orthopedics, urology and plastic surgeons) were
interviewed, and presented very divergent opinions.
Some considered that the use of SSC is very impor-
tant for the safety of the patient, mainly in the points
of the laterality and identification, but recognize that
many health professionals, mainly the surgeons, still
have not adapted to its use. Also, they stated that
if in the case of complications, if the SSC was used
to find the reason of the problem, they would rapidly
change their attitude towards it. Other surgeons state
that the SSC may be important but they do not usually
do it. Actually they consider that the years of expe-
rience are more important than a single SSC. Finally,
one of the problems cited is the fact that “the register
of the SSC or any register was easier when done in
paper when compared to a computer program”. Re-
garding the mobile application, they consider it to be
useful in the confirmation of the material and equip-
ment necessary for the procedures, so the nurses could
register that information in the place where the mate-
rial is stored. The SSC adaptation to different surgery
types, in their opinion, would be ideal, since they con-
sider some items superfluous.
The IT staff of the hospital was surprised with the
observations because they never thought that the pro-
fessional were not complying with the WHO guide-
lines. Also, they explained that it is possible to adapt
the SSC software available at the hospital to a new
application (software that may for example adapt the
SSC for each type of surgery), after approval from
“Direção-Geral da Saúde” (DGS).
4 SURGICAL SAFETY
CHECKLIST APPLICATION
PROPOSAL
After an analysis of the results obtained in the obser-
vational study, and the opinions gathered in the inter-
views, the next step of this study was the development
of a SSC application responding to the health profes-
sionals requests, that may be adapted to the type of
surgery, and easily introduced in the hospital’s sys-
tem. We have chosen an web approach due to all
the advantages of this platform (Umbach, 2004; Man-
freda et al., 2002).
In this application the user can chose between a
SSC already created to a specific surgery or to create
a new SSC, adding and adapting some questions from
the World Health Organization (WHO) standard. In
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