“Before the Bur, Before the Blade”: A World Health Organization (WHO) Safety-First Approach to Dental Procedures- A Scoping Review.

Author

Dr. M. Vaishnavi Devi , Dr. B. LakshmanaRao, Dr. D. Srikanth , Dr. V. Dal Singh, Dr. Vikas Punia


Abstract

 Patient safety is now seen as a key part of quality dental care. While most dental work occurs in outpatient settings, there are many opportunities for mistakes, such as treating the wrong patient or site, medication errors, omitting important medical history, selecting the wrong tooth, leaving materials behind, lapses in infection control, communication problems, and errors during sedation or surgery. The World Health Organization (WHO) created the Surgical Safety Checklist to help prevent these errors and support teamwork. This 19-item checklist is used at three main points: before anesthesia, before the incision, and before the patient leaves the operating room. A major international study found that using the checklist led to fewer complications and deaths.

The WHO checklist was developed for surgery, but its core principles—such as confirming patient identity, checking procedures, anticipating risks, clear communication, teamwork, and post-procedure review—also apply well to dental care. Recent studies show growing interest in safety checklists tailored to dental procedures, especially in oral and maxillofacial surgery. A 2024 review identified 27 studies on dental patient safety checklists, but only 6 examined their effectiveness. This shows the approach is promising, but more solid evidence is needed.

This review covers the ideas behind the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist, how checklists can help reduce errors in dentistry, current trends in their use, challenges to implementing them, and future possibilities with digital dentistry, human factors engineering, artificial intelligence, electronic health records, and data-driven safety systems.



Keywords

WHO Surgical Safety Checklist; dental patient safety; human error; human factors; dentistry; oral surgery; surgical safety; checklist; communication; risk management; quality improvement.



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References


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