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Health Check: Happy Birthday to the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist!

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cropped_surgeons_GettyImage.jpg

2019/01/23 GMT

Happy Birthday to the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist!

BBC World Service - Health Check, Happy Birthday to the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist!

Looking back at 10 years of the intervention that saves lives in the operating theatre

Ten years of the life-saving intervention used in operating theatres round the world; Can the colour of your eyes affect your chances of becoming depressed in winter?

Health Check has been following the progress of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Surgical Safety checklist since 2006 and it’s now the 10th anniversary of the first big evaluation of it. The Surgical Checklist is a list that surgical staff go through right at the start of an operation to make sure they are operating on the right person, in the right way, with the right staff and the right equipment. They also check whether the patient has any allergies, whether they have been given the right kind of antibiotics to prevent infection and that they have not had anything to eat since the night before. Another part of the ethos of the checklist is that any member of staff, however junior, is encouraged to speak up if they are worried about anything being amiss. It is now used in more than a hundred hospitals globally.  Michelle White is a consultant anaesthetist at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, who through the organisation Mercy Ships has been training staff around the world. Dr Nina Capo-Chichi, a first year paediatric surgeon at the national hospital in Benin, took part in the training sessions.

Some people find that winter affects their mood and they even experience depression and find themselves withdrawing socially every winter, while in summer they feel fine. It is known as seasonal affective disorder or SAD, and can be far more serious than simply feeling a bit miserable in the winter.  A team of researchers at the University of South Wales, in the UK, wanted to know why some people get SAD and others do not. They studied the latitude where people live and whether they have SAD, and also something more curious; their eye colour.  Professor of Psychology Lance Workman explains more to Claudia.


(Photo caption: Surgeons in operating room - credit: Getty Images)  


Health Check was presented by Claudia Hammond with comments from Dr Graham Easton


Producer: Helena Selby

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