Strengthening Surgical Teamwork

Improving operating room teamwork and communication is an essential part of improving surgical safety

Surgery has become an essential part of enabling human beings to live long and healthy lives. Yet surgical teams worldwide face significant challenges in ensuring safe patient care.

Improving operating room teamwork and communication has shown to dramatically improve surgical safety.

The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist is a communication tool that reduces preventable human errors by improving communication and teamwork in the operating room. It has shown to cut death rates nearly in half.

Yet truly engaging the team – from hospital leadership to surgeons, from nursing to sterilization processors – has shown to be one of the most challenging parts of effective Checklist implementation. Teamwork requires changing behavioral culture in the operating room and across professional lines.

Strengthening surgical teamwork is one of Lifebox’s core pillars of safer surgery and the Checklist is the bedrock of Lifebox’s safer surgery and anesthesia programs.

Lifebox Pillars of Safer Surgery

Strengthening surgical teamwork is one of Lifebox’s core pillars of safer surgery and the Checklist is the bedrock of Lifebox’s safer surgery and anesthesia programs.

Lifebox Strategic Plan

The 2021-24 Lifebox Strategic Plan targets the most critical moments in the end-to-end surgical patient journey by increasing the quality and impact of Lifebox programs across our three focus areas – safe anesthesia, teamwork, and surgical safety. The theme of this plan – Stronger Teams, Safer Surgery – puts multidisciplinary teamwork at the heart of our approach. We are working to strengthen the professions and processes both within and beyond the operating room, with a particular emphasis on nursing and postoperative care.

Strategic Plan

Lifebox Programs

Clean Cut

Tackles the common and devastating complications of surgical infection by fostering teamwork to improve essential infection prevention processes - including effective Checklist use

Checklist Strategies

A multi-disciplinary workshop that supports surgical teams to share and practice strategies to improve effectiveness and adherence to the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist at their facilities

Explore course

Team CLEFT

A new workshop developed by Smile Train and Lifebox that targets ‘Cleft teams’ to deliver safe cleft surgery and care in the OR and postoperative areas

Enhancing teamwork for safer surgery: Introducing Team CLEFT

Nursing Leadership

Nurses play a critical role in patient care before, during, and after surgery. Nurses are charged with ensuring delivery of key surgical infection prevention processes, from confirming instrument sterility to maintaining the sterile field through gown and drape preparation. Highly skilled nurses improve surgical safety through strong management and leadership, maintaining adherence to perioperative standards and, with the right skillset, providing leadership on teamwork and communication.

However, in many low-resource settings, perioperative nurses face significant challenges due to hierarchical structures and organizational barriers that ignore their value. Lifebox is piloting the Nursing Leadership for Surgical Excellence program to building leadership and management skills of perioperative nurses. Learn more about the program here.