Regional anaesthesia-related complications in Switzerland: Lessons learned from the national closed claims analysis over the past 30 years.

Background: Regional anaesthesia is widely used in clinical practice, offering significant benefits but carrying risks such as nerve damage and other complications. Understanding medicolegal trends associated with regional anaesthesia is essential for improving patient safety and refining practices.

Objectives: To analyse closed claims related to regional anaesthesia in Switzerland over the past 30 years, identify trends in complications and assess their medicolegal implications.

A quality improvement initiative using peer audit and feedback to improve compliance.

Background: The Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC) published by the WHO in 2009 is used as standard in surgery worldwide to reduce perioperative patient mortality. However, compliance with the SSC and quality of its application are often not satisfactory. Internal audits and feedbacks seem promising for improving SSC application.

Ten years of the Helsinki Declaration on patient safety in anaesthesiology: An expert opinion on peri-operative safety aspects.

: Patient safety is an activity to mitigate preventable patient harm that may occur during the delivery of medical care. The European Board of Anaesthesiology (EBA)/European Union of Medical Specialists had previously published safety recommendations on minimal monitoring and postanaesthesia care, but with the growing public and professional interest it was decided to produce a much more encompassing document. The EBA and the European Society of Anaesthesiology (ESA) published a consensus on what needs to be done/achieved for improvement of peri-operative patient safety.

Pre-operative evaluation of adults undergoing elective noncardiac surgery: Updated guideline from the European Society of Anaesthesiology.

: The purpose of this update of the European Society of Anaesthesiology (ESA) guidelines on the pre-operative evaluation of the adult undergoing noncardiac surgery is to present recommendations based on the available relevant clinical evidence. Well performed randomised studies on the topic are limited and therefore many recommendations rely to a large extent on expert opinion and may need to be adapted specifically to the healthcare systems of individual countries. This article aims to provide an overview of current knowledge on the subject with an assessment of the quality of the evidence in order to allow anaesthesiologists all over Europe to integrate - wherever possible - this knowledge into daily patient care.

Enhancing the quality and safety of the perioperative patient.

Purpose Of Review: Many possible hazards bedevil the perioperative patient. This review focuses on a number of aspects of perioperative management where the patient's quality and safety can be enhanced.

Recent Findings: Our understanding of the relationship between preoperative preparation and postoperative outcomes has improved.

Patient safety issues in office-based surgery and anaesthesia in Switzerland: a qualitative study.

Objectives: To identify the spectrum of patient safety issues in office-based surgery and anaesthesia in Switzerland.

Methods: Purposive sample of 23 experts in surgery and anaesthesia and quality and regulation in Switzerland. Data were collected via individual qualitative interviews using a researcher-developed semi-structured interview guide between March 2016 and September 2016.

The Learning Objective Catalogue for Patient Safety in Undergraduate Medical Education--A Position Statement of the Committee for Patient Safety and Error Management of the German Association for Medical Education.

Background: Since the report "To err is human" was published by the Institute of Medicine in the year 2000, topics regarding patient safety and error management are in the focal point of interest of science and politics. Despite international attention, a structured and comprehensive medical education regarding these topics remains to be missing.

Goals: The Learning Objective Catalogue for Patient Safety described below the Committee for Patient Safety and Error Management of the German Association for Medical Education (GMA) has aimed to establish a common foundation for the structured implementation of patient safety curricula at the medical faculties in German-speaking countries.

Safety-II and resilience: the way ahead in patient safety in anaesthesiology.

Purpose Of Review: Anaesthesiology is a specialty with a remarkable track record regarding improvements in safety. Nevertheless, modern healthcare poses increasing demands on quality and outcome: more complexity, more patients with increasing risk-factors, more regulation from society concerning quality and outcome and finally more demand of the stakeholders for efficiency. This leads us to ask the question if our traditional way of handling 'risk' and 'safety' will stand the challenges of the future?

Recent Findings: Most of the success of modern anaesthesiology results from improved technology, pharmacology, training and education, improved systems, focus on human performance as well as standardization and development of guiding information.

An Anesthesia Preinduction Checklist to Improve Information Exchange, Knowledge of Critical Information, Perception of Safety, and Possibly Perception of Teamwork in Anesthesia Teams.

Background: An anesthesia preinduction checklist (APIC) to be performed before anesthesia induction was introduced and evaluated with respect to 5 team-level outcomes, each being a surrogate end point for patient safety: information exchange (the percentage of checklist items exchanged by a team, out of 12 total items); knowledge of critical information (the percentage of critical information items out of 5 total items such as allergies, reported as known by the members of a team); team members' perceptions of safety (the median scores given by the members of a team on a continuous rating scale); their perception of teamwork (the median scores given by the members of a team on a continuous rating scale); and clinical performance (the percentage of completed items out of 14 required tasks, e.g., suction device checked).

The Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology: the past, present and future.

Purpose Of Review: Four years after the launch of the Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology, it is of interest to assess its role in European and Global Patient Safety efforts.

Recent Findings: The Declaration is widely supported, not only in Europe, but also has attracted much attention and support globally. In Europe, it represented a major step in European-wide patient safety networking and initiatives.

National critical incident reporting systems relevant to anaesthesia: a European survey.

Background: Critical incident reporting is a key tool in the promotion of patient safety in anaesthesia.

Methods: We surveyed representatives of national incident reporting systems in six European countries, inviting information on scope and organization, and intelligence on factors determining success and failure.

Results: Some systems are government-run and nationally conceived; others started out as small, specialty-focused initiatives, which have since acquired a national reach.

A survey of standardised drug syringe label use in European anaesthesiology departments.

Context: Standardised drug syringe labelling may reduce drug errors, but data on drug syringe labelling use in European anaesthesiology departments are lacking.

Objectives: Survey investigating if standardised drug syringe labelling is used, and if there are geographical, demographic and professional differences in hospitals with and without use of drug syringe labelling.

Design: Structured, web-based anonymised questionnaire.

[CIRRNET® - learning from errors, a success story].

CIRRNET® is the network of local error-reporting systems of the Swiss Patient Safety Foundation. The network has been running since 2006 together with the Swiss Society for Anaesthesiology and Resuscitation (SGAR), and network participants currently include 39 healthcare institutions from all four different language regions of Switzerland. Further institutions can join at any time.

Preoperative evaluation of the adult patient undergoing non-cardiac surgery: guidelines from the European Society of Anaesthesiology.

The purpose of these guidelines on the preoperative evaluation of the adult non-cardiac surgery patient is to present recommendations based on available relevant clinical evidence. The ultimate aims of preoperative evaluation are two-fold. First, we aim to identify those patients for whom the perioperative period may constitute an increased risk of morbidity and mortality, aside from the risks associated with the underlying disease.

The Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology: putting words into practice.

In June 2010, the European Board of Anaesthesiology (EBA) of the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS) and the European Society of Anaesthesiology (ESA) signed the Helsinki Declaration for Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology at the Euroanaesthesia meeting in Helsinki. The document had been jointly prepared by these two principal anaesthesiology organisations in Europe who pledged to improve the safety of patients being cared for by anaesthesiologists working in the medical fields of perioperative care, intensive care medicine, emergency medicine and pain medicine. The declaration stated their current heads of agreement on patient safety and listed a number of principle requirements as thought necessary for anaesthesiologists, anaesthesiology departments and institutions to introduce to improve patient safety.