A systematic review of the effectiveness, compliance, and critical factors for implementation of safety checklists in surgery.

Checklists have garnered wide publicity due to their use in seminal studies demonstrating their effectiveness at preventing central line infections and surgical complications. This systematic review evaluated the effectiveness and critical factors for successful implementation of surgical checklists. The authors found strong evidence that using checklists improves perioperative clinical outcomes. However, checklist usage varied widely across studies, indicating that careful attention must be paid to how checklists are implemented in clinical settings.