Observational studyBMJ quality & safety2021
Timeout procedure in paediatric surgery: effective tool or lip service? A randomised prospective observational study.
Observational study in BMJ quality & safety, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- [User behavior during functional testing of the ventilator: analysis of the use of the QUICKcheck and detection of misconnected ventilation tubes].Die Anaesthesiologie · 2025Article
- Healthcare professionals' perception of the World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist and psychological safety: a cross-sectional survey.BMJ open quality · 2024Article
- Compliance with the surgical safety checklist in Switzerland: an observational multicenter study based on self-reported data.Patient safety in surgery · 2022Article
- Surgical safety checklist: fact or fake?Einstein (Sao Paulo, Brazil) · 2022Article
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4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundFor over a decade, the preoperative timeout procedure has been implemented in most paediatric surgery units. However, the impact of this intervention has not been systematically studied. This study evaluates whether purposefully introduced errors during the timeout routine are detected and reported by the operating team members.
methodsAfter ethics board approval and informed consent, deliberate errors were randomly and clandestinely introduced into the timeout routine for elective surgical procedures by a paediatric surgery attending. Errors were randomly selected among wrong name, site, side, allergy, intervention, birthdate and gender items. The main outcome measure was how frequent an error was reported by the team and by whom.
resultsOver the course of 16 months, 1800 operations and timeouts were performed. Errors were randomly introduced in 120 cases (6.7%). Overall, 54% of the errors were reported; the remainder went unnoticed. Errors were pointed out most frequently by anaesthesiologists (64%), followed by nursing staff (28%), residents-in-training (6%) and medical students (1%).
conclusionErrors in the timeout routine go unnoticed by the team in almost half of cases. Therefore, even if preoperative timeout routines are strictly implemented, mistakes may be overlooked. Hence, the timeout procedure in its current form appears unreliable. Future developments may be useful to improve the quality of the surgical timeout and should be studied in detail.
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