UW News

May 7, 2009

UW Medicine demonstrates use of the WHO/SCOAP surgical checklist

Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering

If you watched one of the final episodes of the NBC television show “ER” in March 2009, you had a chance to see how doctors and medical teams use a checklist before performing surgery.


Before it was shown on “ER,” the safe surgery checklist was being used at UW Medical Center in Seattle.


Want to learn more? UW Medicine experts discuss in this video use of the WHO/SCOAP surgical checklist and provide a demonstration for health-care providers, potential patients and the general public. WHO is the World Health Organization and SCOAP is the Surgical Care and Outcomes Assessment Program.


Dr. E. Patchen Dellinger, UW professor of surgery and vice-chairman of the Department of Surgery, spearheaded UW Medical Center’s involvement in a year-long WHO pilot program in eight hospitals around the world.


The program proved conclusively that inpatient deaths can be significantly reduced, along with the rate of major complications after surgery, by following a simple checklist. UWMC was the only U.S. hospital to participate in the pilot phase of the WHO program.


In Washington state, Dr. David Flum, UW professor of surgery, serves as medical director of the Surgical Care and Outcomes Assessment Program, or SCOAP. The program has adapted the WHO checklist for use in hospitals.


SCOAP is a Washington state collaborative of surgeons that, as of April 2009, involves 48 hospitals and provides data regarding the use of the checklist and other measures, with an aim of reducing surgical complications.


SCOAP is supported by the Life Sciences Discovery Fund and has assembled a coalition of hospitals, professional organizations, health insurance companies, employers, and nonprofit organizations to promote the use of the checklist in every hospital and every operating room in the state of Washington by the end of 2009.