Surgical Safety Checklist Use Among Oral Surgeons in AAOMS Database

Objectives: Improving surgical safety has become a high priority in order to ensure patient safety. In 2008, the WHO ‘World Alliance for Patient Safety’ developed a ‘Surgical Safety Checklist’ and published data its efficacy. The overall objective of this study is to determine the attitudes towards and prevalence of usage of the ambulatory Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Safety checklist among Oral Surgeons.
Methods: One thousand Oral Surgeons with a valid e-mail address published in the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS) directory were sent an email with a link to the survey. Email addresses were randomly selected by a person not involved in the study to remove any bias with subject selection. Qualtrics, the survey tool used at Tufts University, was used to facilitate the distribution of surveys and manage the responses.
Results: A total of 110 oral surgeons responded to the survey. 94% of responders were male. 82% of the responders were in private practice and of these only 37% reported using checklist in their practice. 60% of participants (n=66) reported that they were not using a surgical safety checklist for ambulatory surgery. 93% of the participants reported that if provided they would consider implementing a surgical safety checklist in their practice. 26% of Oral Surgeons reported that they were not using a safety checklist in their practice although they reported that they were performing more than 30 procedures a week.
Conclusions: Although not statistically significant, the majority of the oral surgeons who had completed OMFS training for longer than 20 years reported not using a checklist in their practice. Majority of surgeons had a positive attitude towards implementing a surgical safety checklist in their practice. Further studies can be done to create a standardized checklist that can be available for surgeons to use in their practices.