Evaluation of anesthesia preinduction checklist

Editor's Note

In this study, the use of a preinduction checklist significantly improved information exchange, knowledge of critical information, and perception of safety in anesthesia teams.

A total of 105 teams using the checklist were compared with 100 control teams. The outcome scores for the checklist group vs the controls were: information exchange (100% vs 33%), knowledge of critical information (100% vs 90%), perception of safety (91% vs 84%), perception of teamwork (90% vs 86%), and clinical performance (93% vs 93%).

BACKGROUND: An anesthesia preinduction checklist (APIC) to be performed before anesthesia induction was introduced and evaluated with respect to 5 team-level outcomes, each being a surrogate end point for patient safety: information exchange (the percentage of checklist items exchanged by a team,...