What Are the Effects of Introducing the WHO “Surgical Safety Checklist” on In-Hospital Mortality?

The term evidence-based medicine was first coined by Sackett and colleagues as “the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.” The key to practicing evidence-based medicine is applying the best current knowledge to decisions in individual patients. Medical knowledge is continually and rapidly expanding, and it is impossible for an individual clinician to read all the medical literature. For clinicians to practice evidencebased medicine, they must have the skills to read and interpret the medical literature so that they can determine the validity, reliability, credibility, and utility of individual articles. These skills are known as critical appraisal skills. Generally, critical appraisal requires that the clinician have some knowledge of biostatistics, clinical epidemiology, decision analysis, and economics as well as clinical knowledge. The Canadian Association of General Surgeons (CAGS) and the American College of Surgeons (ACS) jointly sponsor a program titled, “Evidence-Based Reviews in Surgery” (EBRS), supported by an educational grant from Ethicon Inc and Ethicon Endo Surgery Inc. The primary objective of this initiative is to help practicing surgeons improve their critical appraisal skills. During the academic year, 8 clinical articles are chosen for review and discussion. They are selected not only for their clinical relevance to general surgeons, but also because they cover a spectrum of issues important to surgeons; for example, causation or risk factors for