Elizabeth Finch, DNP '17; and Katherine Pereira, professor; recently published an article entitled "Debriefing in the OR: A Quality Improvement Project" in the Journal of Perioperative Nursing. Co-authors include Michael Langston of UNC Health Care and Deborah Erickson of UNC Health Care.

Abstract

Ineffective communication can contribute to perioperative adverse events even when a safety checklist is used. The purpose of this project was to improve the overall debriefing process of the surgical safety checklist. We included coaches and used the International Classification for Patient Safety for categorizing any opportunities for improvement that were identified during the debriefing process. The results of our project showed an increase in both the total number of debriefings completed and the number of items discussed when completing the debriefing checklist in comparison with the preintervention compliance audits. We concluded that by using a coaching strategy and method to categorize perioperative opportunities for improvement during the debriefing process, there was improved compliance with completing the debriefing process in our facility.