A Surgical Safety Checklist to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in a Global Population

Surgery has become an integral part of global health care, with an estimated 234 million operations performed yearly. Surgical complications are common and often preventable. We hypothesized that a program to implement a 19-item surgical safety checklist designed to improve team communication and consistency of care would reduce complications and deaths associated with surgery.Between October 2007 and September 2008, eight hospitals in eight...