WHO Patient Safety Safe Surgery Saves Lives Regional Workshop
Place: Ha Noi, Viet Nam
Date: 24 Nov, 2010 - 24 Nov, 2010
The Vietnamese Society of Surgery (VSS) in collaboration with WHO organized an Inter-Country Meeting on "Promoting the Second Global Patient Safety Challenge: Safe Surgery, Saves Lives". Unsafe Surgical care can cause tremendous harm to patients. The World Alliance for Patient Safety has reported that at least half of the cases in which surgery led to harm are considered to be preventable and complications after inpatient operations occur in up to 25% of patients. Therefore, the pervasiveness of the problem of surgical safety is well recognized and would merit immediate action. WHO has adopted a system-wide approach to reduce complications and death during surgery and to foster improved surgical safety. Various global and regional initiatives have been undertaken by WHO in collaboration with the Medical Professional Societies to address Surgical Safety. One of the identified major strategies is to promote the use of the Safe Surgery Checklist through conferences and meetings organized wherein local and cultural perspectives were incorporated by the professional societies. Similar initiative was done in other countries and has been very successful for the ownership of the checklist was easily embraced by the medical and nursing professions. Successful implementation of the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist will require adaptations to local routines and expectations. The objectives of the meeting will include:
- Presentation of the General Overview of Patient Safety concepts and principles as well as introducing key WHO Patient Safety activities.
- Introduction of the WHO Safe Surgery Checklist tool and share experiences and strategies of other countries on the implementation of the tool.
- Recommendations or modifications on the checklist based on local/country situation will be gathered.
- Identification of common locally observed errors in surgery and factors that lead to such errors.
- Identification of factors that will affect the implementation of the checklist and strategies to overcome them.
- Development of country action plan.