Authors

1Maite Santurtún Zarrabeitia, 2Blanca Torres Manrique

Position

¹Doctoranda Unidad de Investigación de Psiquiatría de Cantabria (UIPC). Hospital Universitario Marqués de Valdecilla. Centro Hospitalario Padre Menni. Santander.²Ayudante LOU. Departamento de Enfermería. Escuela Universitaria Casa de Salud Valdecilla. Universidad de Cantabria. Santander.

Contact address

Maite Santurtún Zarrabeitia. C/ Leonardo Torres Quevedo, 3. 39011 Santander.

Contact email: maite.santurtun@gmail.com

Abstract

The essential priority in clinical care is patient safety; that is why the World Health Organization (WHO) has undertaken multiple initiatives in order to improve surgical safety. The Global Initiative for Emergency and Essential Surgical Care, as well as its guidelines for basic orthopedic care, focused on access and quality; and The Second Global Patient Safety Challenge: Safe Surgery Saves Lives addresses safety in surgical care. The World Alliance for Patient Safety started working in this challenge in January, 2007. The objective is to improve the safety of surgery throughout the world, by defining a basic set of safety rules which might be implemented in all WHO member countries. Surgery is a really complex activity, because it entails potential risks for which there is no way to guarantee their absence, because there are factors inherent to the system as well as human actions. Precisely due to this complexity and all actions included in clinical safety, this paper focuses on the description of the surgical process phases; to that end, a bibliographic search has been conducted to review and update all available basic information, and to suggest actions which may prevent endangering the clinical safety of patients, with the aim to help to implement a safety culture in those professionals in charge of care.

Keywords:

Clinical safety of patients; safe surgery; adverse effects; hospital infection; patient carehealthcare quality

Versión en Español

Título:

La importancia de una cirugía segura