Surgical Safety Checklist Compliance (SSCL)

Beginning July 30, 2010, hospitals with operating rooms will be required to publicly report their Surgical Safety Checklist (SSCL) compliance.

The SSCL is a patient safety communication tool used by the operating room (OR) team to facilitate team discussion and ensure that everyone is familiar with the case, reducing reliance on memory for certain necessary interventions. Ultimately, using SSCLs will improve teamwork and communication in the OR, which can lead to improved patient care and safety, decreased complications and deaths from surgery, and better operating room efficiency.

SSCLs are divided into three parts relating to different phases of a surgery (i.e., briefing, time-out and debriefing), and each section of the checklist has information that is relevant to that phase.

OR teams have used different types of checklists for many years. The three-phase SSCL has emerged as a useful best practice because it organizes the information at the right moments in time. It reduces reliance on memory so that one person is not responsible for remembering every single step needed for a safe surgery.

The public reporting of our hospital’s SSCL percentage compliance allows hospitals to establish a baseline from which they can track their percentage compliance over time.

Patients having surgery at our hospital can expect to have the checklist performed during their procedure.

The public can also access these rates on the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care (MOHLTC) website at www.ontario.ca/patientsafety.

NOTE: On the MOHLTC website, Hotel Dieu Hospital is classified as an Acute Teaching Hospital.

Frequently asked questions about Surgical Safety Checklist Compliance