ReviewCureus2025
Implementation of Surgical Safety Checklists in Orthopaedic Surgery: A Narrative Review of Compliance, Barriers, and Future Improvements.
Review in Cureus, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The introduction of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC) marked a turning point in global surgical safety, standardising perioperative processes and promoting teamwork across disciplines. While the SSC has demonstrated significant reductions in surgical morbidity and mortality, its implementation in orthopaedic surgery remains uniquely challenging due to procedural complexity, implant verification demands, and frequent laterality checks. Despite high reported compliance, persistent errors such as wrong-site surgery, equipment malfunction, and implant mismatch underscore a disconnect between checklist completion and true surgical readiness. This narrative review examines the evolution, current use, and effectiveness of the SSC within orthopaedic surgery, highlighting barriers such as hierarchical theatre culture, workflow pressures, and logistical challenges that often reduce engagement to a "tick-box" exercise. Facilitators, including leadership involvement, multidisciplinary communication, simulation-based training, and continuous audit feedback mechanisms, have been identified as key enablers of sustained improvement. Emerging innovations such as digital checklist integration, real-time data auditing, and artificial intelligence-assisted verification present new opportunities to enhance reliability, accountability, and adaptability in orthopaedic theatres. However, achieving meaningful and lasting impact requires a paradigm shift from procedural adherence to behavioural fidelity and cultural transformation. The review concludes by outlining a future research agenda focused on orthopaedic-specific checklist tailoring, contextual implementation science, and development of standardised outcome metrics. Ultimately, the goal is to evolve the SSC from a procedural formality into an adaptive safety framework that reflects the complexity and precision of modern orthopaedic surgery.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.