Introduction: Surgical complications are one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality among patients. It has been estimated that at least half of the complications that occur are avoidable through strong patient safety culture in healthcare systems. Implementation of Surgical Safety Checklists is a significant step towards achieving safe surgery practices. Successful execution of Surgical Safety Checklists needs high level interaction among social, cultural, and operational reasons in the health system which emphasizes on teamwork in carrying out preparatory stages of surgery, safe anaesthesia, for proper monitoring of the patient and advance preparation to identify anaesthetics or life threatening problems, prevention of surgical site infection and measurement of surgical care for the creation of indicators to measure the processes and outcomes of surgical care. Successful carryout of patient safety practices will pay out not just in terms of quality patient care but also in keeping healthcare economics under control. Objectives: The study focused on to assess Surgical Safety Practices in a tertiary care hospital in compliance with the standards specified by World Health Organization (WHO). Method: A retrospective study was conducted for a period of three month to evaluate the surgical safety checklists in patient’s medical records. Total of 500 patient surgical records were randomly selected and screened to evaluate the compliance of Surgical Safety Checklist with the standards mentioned by WHO. A checklist was developed to confirm the details entered in the sample records. Results & Conclusion: It was observed that there was an about 90% adherence to the standard Surgical Safety Practices set by WHO. However details pertaining to administration of antibiotic prophylaxis, anticipated critical events by surgeons, anaesthetists and nurses; noticing equipment problems, name and signature of the concerned members should be confirmed and marked in the respective columns of the checklist to achieve complete compliance to WHO standards. Thus, the current study had evaluated the surgical safety practices and identified the areas that needed attention in order to ensure patient safety during surgeries.

Keywords: Surgical Safety Checklist, WHO, Patient Safety, Surgery, Healthcare Quality