Eight-year experience with a neurosurgical checklist.

Increased emphasis on patient safety in hospitals worldwide has become a critical goal for health care facilities and providers over the past decade. Resident work hour restrictions, handwashing efforts, medication reconciliation, procedural pauses, and a variety of improved communication mechanisms among all providers have been instituted. In an effort to improve patient safety and quality in the operating room and to reduce any potential errors in care, the Department of Neurological Surgery at Mayo Clinic in Arizona initiated an intraoperative checklist program 8 years ago. The concept was to develop a tool to maintain and improve patient safety in the operating rooms that would be both effective and practical. The authors report on their 8-year experience with this tool and review the literature concerning surgical checklists.