The organisational approach in hospitals surgical areas is frequently multidisciplinary, an assistance methodology that allows nurses and other healthcare professionals to provide a safer and more complete assistance to their patients.
The purpose of this thesis is to analyse, through a review of the literature, the critical points in the teamwork of the multi-professional surgical team. In particular, it was considered to look at communication between operators and a security tool such as the checklist in surgical settings.
The operating room is an intensive-communication environment: safety in the performance is directly affected by how the information flows in the various stages and parts of the surgical unit (56% of the intra-and postoperative complications are due to failures in communication). In the internal dynamics of the surgical team, communication was found to be one of the most critical points with an average of about 30% of the occurrence of sentinel events related to a dysfunctional communication between the team.
The members of the team are in continuous interaction and this leads to the need for recognition and respect for the responsibilities of each operator, as well as collaboration, organisation and planning. Accordingly, in 2007 the WHO introduced and recommended the use of a new tool: the checklist. In addition to strengthen current security practices and ensure that they are undertaken in time and with efficiency, this tool encourages better communication because its use requires more interaction between the different professionals. Moreover, the example considered shows that this tool can have a positive response by of all professionals involved.
