Skip to main content
AAO-HNSF 2023 Annual Meeting & OTO Experience Main banner
Icon Legend
This session is not in your schedule.
This session is in your schedule. Click again to remove it.

Patient Safety and Quality Improvement

Surgical Checklists – Benefit or Burnout: A Debate

Tuesday, October 3, 2023
4:45 PM - 5:45 PM East Coast USA Time
Location: 202A

    Moderator(s)

  • CB

    Carol M. Bier-Laning, MD MBA FACS

    Professor and Department Quality Medical Director
    Dept of Otolaryngology, Loyola University Medical Center
    Maywood, IL, United States

    • Panelist(s)

  • Soham Roy, MD

    Chair of Pediatric Otolaryngology
    Children's Hospital Colorado
    Aurora, Colorado, United States

  • RG

    Richard Goldman, MD

    Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, USA

  • KK

    Kiran Kakarala, MD FACS

    Professor and Vice Chair for Patient Safety and Quality Improvement
    University of Kansas Medical Center
    Kansas City, KS, United States

Disclosure(s):
Soham Roy, MD: No relevant relationships to disclose.
Kiran Kakarala, MD FACS: No relevant relationships to disclose.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: All practitioners who perform surgery are familiar with the surgical timeout checklist, the third component of the Universal Protocol that was introduced by the Joint Commission and became a mandatory quality standard in 2004. Many other checklists are used in healthcare, but there is a lack of standardized methodology for the development and design of medical-specific checklists (Hales et al, Int J Qual Health Care 2008). Healthcare entities are increasingly moving towards becoming high reliability organizations (HROs), taking cues from other HROs such as the aviation and nuclear power industries. Because of this move, the use of checklists is increasing, but with that, checklist fatigue is also increasing. This panel discussion will start with an overview of general principles when assessing the literature. The majority of the panel will be a pro versus con debate surrounding the usefulness and effectiveness of checklists in improving quality and preventing harm events. The guidelines of the debate will be the respectful interchange of information with equal time being given to each side. The presentation will conclude with a review of how checklists have been used in Otolaryngology specifically to address errors and adverse events, and how the checklist process might be improved to decrease fatigue and improve outcomes.

OUTCOME OBJECTIVE 1: Improve the ability of attendees to be effective consumers of knowledge and critically assess information from various sources

OUTCOME OBJECTIVE 2: Understand the benefit and pitfalls of checklist usage in healthcare

OUTCOME OBJECTIVE 3: Understand how checklists designed for Otolaryngology to improve quality and safety may result in loss of efficiency, “checklist fatigue” and failure to actually improve quality and decrease errors.

BACKGROUND STATEMENT: The dichotomy of how and why checklists can improve care delivery, but can also worsen surgeon satisfaction, increase frustrations and contribute to burnout is important to acknowledge and understand in order to see the intended gains from checklist usage.