Checklists for Safer Perioperative Care

Key points

• Perioperative safety checklists exist for both routine (e.g., safety pause before case start) and nonroutine situations (e.g., perioperative critical events).

• Insight from the implementation sciences has been used to determine the best strategies to determine how to foster use of perioperative checklists, when indicated.

• Perioperative safety checklists can benefit not only the patient but also healthcare professionals at the individual, team, and system level.