[Improving patient safety: Usefulness of safety checklists in a neonatal unit].

Introduction: Due to the complexity and characteristics of their patients, neonatal units are risk areas for the development of adverse events (AE). For this reason, there is a need to introduce and implement some tools and strategies that will help to improve the safety of the neonatal patient. Safety check-lists have shown to be a useful tool in other health areas but they are not sufficiently developed in Neonatal Units.
Material and Methods: A quasi-experimental prospective study was conducted on the design and implementation of the use of a checklist and evaluation of its usefulness for detecting incidents. The satisfaction of the health professionals on using the checklist tool was also assessed.
Results: The compliance rate in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) was 56.5%, with 4.03 incidents per patient being detected. One incident was detected for every 5.3 checklists used. The most frequent detected incidents were those related to medication, followed by inadequate alarm thresholds, adjustments of the monitors, and medication pumps. The large majority (75%) of the NICU health professionals considered the checklist useful or very useful, and 68.75% considered that its use had managed to avoid an AE. The overall satisfaction was 83.33% for the professionals with less than 5 years working experience, and 44.4% of the professionals with more than 5 years of experience were pleased or very pleased.
Conclusion: The checklists have shown to be a useful tool for the detection of incidents, especially in NICU, with a positive assessment from the health professionals of the unit.
(Copyright © 2016 Asociación Española de Pediatría. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.)