completed the paper
checklist. Now they
wanted the entire
checklist integrated
into the EMR, so the
OR nurse had to
check off each
element.
"It had to be easy to
use and navigate,"
says Magdalena
Sayed, MSN, RN-BC,
CNOR, who was tasked with integrating the safety checklist into the
EMR. "I had to take the piece of paper and turn it into a live version.
Everything had to be included and it all had to be searchable in case
someone needed to access a piece of the checklist at any point during
the perioperative process."
At first, nurses were concerned about the added mouse clicks, but
just as with implementing the checklist itself, they soon overcame the
learning curve and adapted to the electronic version.
Collaboration and compliance
The results have been impressive since Saint Peter's implemented its
surgical safety checklist in the first quarter of 2013. "We asked our
quality control department to look at our inpatient patient mortality
rate before and after we started using the checklist," says Ms.
DiBrienza. During the first year of implementation, their surgical
mortality rate dropped from 1.44% to 0.65%. "And it's continued to trend
down since then," says Ms. DiBrienza. In the third quarter of 2017, the
mortality rate was 0.4%.
OSM
9 6 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • J U N E 2 0 1 8
Download a PDF of Saint Peter's University
Hospital's surgical safety checklist at
outpatientsurgery.net/forms.
