Implementation of Safe Surgery Saves Lives initiative in Ahmed ...

AbstractAim: This paper reports on the implementation of a Safe Surgery Saves Lives, in Ahmed-Gasim‟s Cardiac Center in 2011 using a change management framework.Background: Medical errors and incidence of traumatic injuries in surgical care services wererecognized as a proportion of the total global burden of disease. Surgical care and procedures canpotentially affect the lives of millions of people worldwide. Studies done by WHO found thatwrong person, wrong procedure, and wrong site surgery is a preventable adverse event, anddefined a core set of minimum standards that can be applied universally across borders andsettings, and developed a Surgical Safety Checklist as a tool to ensure safety culture, teamwork,communications, information handoff, patient involvement, and systematic check of processes.Methods: A Users‟ Guide to Managing Change in the Health Service Executive, HSE changemodel with major four phases; initiation, planning, implementation, and mainstreaming, wasused to guide the implementation of the Safe Surgery Saves Live Initiative through using theWHO Surgical Safety Checklist in Ahmed-Gasim‟ Cardiac Center (AGCC).Results:Implementation of a surgery checklist improved safety culture, memory recall,communication, team work, systematic check process, and decrease medical errors, such aswrong patient, wrong site, and wrong procedure. Implementation of a surgery checklist did notdelay cases or increase load of work.6