A Three-Year Retrospective Study of the World Health Organisation Safety Checklist Compliance in a Comprehensive Specialized Hospital in Debre Tabor, North Central Ethiopia

Introduction: World Health Organization (WHO) surgical safety checklist implementation is important for good outcomes of surgical patients. WHO surgical safety checklist has three components (sign in, time out, and sign out) and has to be applied before the surgery and before the transfer of the patient to the recovery room. WHO surgical safety checklist was implemented in 25%−65% among the surgical team in different hospitals. Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the compliance and completeness of the WHO surgical safety checklist at Debre Tabor Comprehensive Specialized Hospital. Methods: We used a three-year retrospective survey from July 2017 to July 2020 based on a chart review of surgical patient charts. We include a total of 3460 surgical patient charts for three years period, and from this, we got a surgical safety checklist from 2842 surgical patient charts. We analyzed the data by using SPSS version 21. And finally, the descriptive statistics presented. Results: From this study, the compliance of the WHO surgical safety checklist was 82.1% (2842/3460). From the parts of the checklist, sign in, time out, and sign out were implemented in 85.1% (2420/2842), 43.9% (1248/2842), and 57.7% (1642/2842), respectively. The overall completeness of the checklist (all boxes ticked off) was 30.4% (864/2842). Conclusion: The compliance of the WHO surgical safety checklist was good but their completeness was still poor so it needs attention and follow-up for better completeness of the WHO surgical safety checklist.