ABSTRACT
This chapter documents knowledge of real work practices related to the introduction of a typical clinical safety measure, that is, a checklist for safe surgery issued and recommended by the World Health Organization in 2007. It shows that the Safe Surgery Checklist holds the function of gathering the team before the surgical procedure in a new way that unites the team before and during the operation, and it represents a formalized arena for information exchange between team members. The chapter explores how checklists were integrated in the creation of safe work practices in interdisciplinary surgical teams. The study applied an ethnographic approach grounded in a combination of detailed non-participant observations, conversations and semi-structured interviews. The study was conducted in a surgical unit of a Norwegian regional general hospital, with the main unit of analysis being the surgical teams typically consisting of one to two operators, two operating room nurses, one nurse anaesthetist, and one anaesthetist physician.
