Quality Improvement of Surgical Team Communication of Required Percutaneous Nephrolithotomy Equipment.

Objective: To evaluate if implementation of a percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) equipment whiteboard can improve communication accuracy of surgical equipment, streamline operative efficiency, and decrease unnecessary case equipment costs.
Methods: A real-time editable equipment whiteboard was designed and implemented for all PCNL cases between October and December 2021. The relative difference in pre- and post-intervention surgical equipment accuracy as well as overall case costing was compared from 90 days prior to implementation to the period after intervention.
Results: Quality assessment surveys were completed prior to whiteboard implementation (N = 25) and cost implementation (n = 15). Pre- and postoperative assessment of equipment communication, assessed on a 10-point scale, improved after implementation of the communication whiteboard (Pre-op: 6.7/10 vs. 8.9/10, P < .001. Post-op: 7.0/10 vs. 9.3/10, P < .001). On average 64% (3.2/5) of items were accurate on preintervention cases. Postintervention accuracy improved to 88% (4.4/5 items) (P = .049). There was a significant relative case cost improvement after implementing the PCNL equipment whiteboard with an average of $436.81 USD savings per case (P = .001) and $488.22 USD per renal moiety (P = .002).
Conclusion: Our baseline quality assessment of surgical team communication regarding PCNL equipment identified an area for improvement. Multidisciplinary feedback resulted in the development of a real-time editable PCNL equipment whiteboard which improved team perception of equipment communication, case item accuracy and resulted in a relative average cost savings for PCNL.
Competing Interests: DECLARATION OF COMPETING INTEREST The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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