The National Patient Safety Agency has updated the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist (adapted for England and Wales) issued 15 January 2009.
Please ensure any alerts with the reference NPSA/2009/PSA002 are removed from circulation and replaced with alert NPSA/2009/PSA002/U1 (attached) . The NPSA will be writing to all medical and nursing directors this week with copies of the alert and details of the update.
This alert requires healthcare organisations in England and Wales to implement the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist (adapted for England and Wales) for every patient undergoing a surgical procedure.
The goal is to strengthen the commitment of clinical staff to address safety issues in the surgical setting. This includes:
- Improving anaesthetic safety practices
- Ensuring correct site surgery
- Avoiding surgical site infections
- Improving communication within the team.
The updates to the alert are:
UPDATE 1: Organisations are required to:
- Ensure an executive and a clinical lead are identified in order to implement the surgical safety checklist within the organisation.
- Ensure the checklist is completed for every patient undergoing a surgical procedure (including local anaesthesia).
- Ensure that the use of the checklist is entered in the clinical notes or electronic record by a registered member of the team, for example: Surgeon/Anaesthetist/Nurse/ODP.
UPDATE 2: Insertion on the checklist (Time Out section) of action for Nurse/ODP.
UPDATE 3: Removal of the Registered Practitioner’s signature from the checklist.
For further information about this alert (NPSA/2009/PSA002/U1) and to view the supporting information go to http://www.nrls.npsa.nhs.uk/resources/clinical-specialty/surgery/
There is an implementation event for the alert taking place 26 March 2009, more details of this will be published on the NPSA website soon.