Any lingering doubts about the positive effects of comprehensive surgical checklist intervention should vanish following the release of a study conducted in the Netherlands and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Dutch study evaluated the effects of a comprehensive surgical checklist intervention in six regional and tertiary care centers in the Netherlands and involved 11 distinct checklists applied during different phases of preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative care completed by surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses and other staff.