3 ms·

They didn't just measure the difference and call it a day. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bjs.11151 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/

• treis 7y ago
  >The Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) is a national initiative which aims to improve in‐hospital mortality rates in Scotland. The SPSP was established in 2008 and had perioperative management, including implementation of the WHO surgical checklist, as one of its four key initial workstreams. This programme offered a systematic approach to improve patient safety across all hospitals in the country26. >After testing, review and feedback from health boards across Scotland, the surgical checklist was included as one of the ten Patient Safety Essentials to be implemented across all health boards in Scotland37. The surgical checklist was not a stand‐alone intervention. It was, however, the only Patient Safety Essential that targeted surgical patients specifically during the interval studied37. Thus, the addition of the checklist to the other parameters within the SPSP may have contributed to the improvement in results observed in the present study. >It is acknowledged that attributing causal links to the findings in population‐wide data set analysis is not possible. What you said they didn't do is kind of exactly what they did. Yes, there is some attempts at hand waving, but it's silly to boil down the success of a large and multi pronged program to a simple checklist.
  • Camas 7y ago
    >It was, however, the only Patient Safety Essential that targeted surgical patients specifically during the interval studied. That's hardly hand-waving.
    • treis 7y ago
      That's exactly what hand-waving is. It's bad logic they use to support a conclusion that they then immediately hedge in the following sentence. Here's the 10 safety essentials check list they are talking about: http://www.healthcareimprovementscotland.org/news_and_events/news/news_patient_safety_top_10.aspx http://www.healthcareimprovementscotland.org/news_and_events... If the checklist is responsible for all of the improvement in surgical outcomes then we can stop doing the rest of the stuff, right? No need to emphasize hand washing or sterile central line because the magic checklist will stop the infection.
      • marmshallow 7y ago
        I agree. They don't control for external variables.
      • Camas 7y ago
        Even if the checklist was responsible for all of the improvement in surgical outcomes that doesn't mean the other items don't have an affect anywhere else. And again, it's not hand-waving to suggest that the item that has the largest direct impact on surgical operations is mainly responsible for the reduction. There's a difference between you wanting a more thorough study and something being "obviously nonsense".