The findings, based on nearly 120000 operations and published in the Archives of Surgery, come a year after researchers reported a drop in patient death rates with the same program.     

Under the system, which is designed to catch medical errors before they lead to harm, the surgery team uses a checklist to discuss the patient and the procedure before starting surgery, then debriefs afterwards.     

Patients may be involved in the briefings as well.     

“Patients like it, staff like it, it is better for morale,” said Douglas Paull, a surgeon at the Veterans Health Administration’s National Center for Patient Safety in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who worked on the study.     

“(Doctors and nurses) work in teams, we care about one another and we care about the patient, and it shows and outcomes are better,” he told Reuters Health.     

Paull and his colleagues compared infections, blood clots and other complications in patients being treated at 42 Veterans Health Administration (VHA) facilities that had implemented the so-called Medical Team Training program, and another 32 that hadn’t.     

In the year before surgical staff were trained in the communication and teamwork program, hospitals in that group had 90 non-fatal complications out of every 1000 surgeries, on average. That dropped to 75 in the year after the program was established.     

In comparison, there was a smaller drop from 81 complications to 76 for every 1000 surgeries in facilities that hadn’t taken up the program — which researchers said could have been due to chance.     

Specifically, facilities implementing the training saw a drop in surgery-related blood clots and both skin surface and deep wound infections.

In all, 37 of the 42 facilities with the new system improved their complication rates, versus 22 of 32 hospitals that didn’t have the extra focus on teamwork and communication.     

“If you look at our training programs, we’ve so much focused on tying knots and putting tubes in the right place — individual skills,” said Peter Pronovost, a critical care doctor who has studied surgical complications at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.     

“But we’ve underfocused on teamwork and that systems view, and a lot of patients are suffering needlessly because of it,” he told Reuters Health.     

Paull said that the system would work in hospitals outside the VHA system as well, noting that lack of communication can drive up costs and injure patients needlessly — and is highly preventable.     

Pronovost urged patients and their families to be aware of the communications aspect of their care.     

“If your clinician isn’t welcoming of your questions, isn’t welcoming of you being a partner on your team, that should be a red flag,” he said.     

“If they’re welcoming not only your input but the nurses’ input and other members of the care team’s input, that’s a really positive sign that they’re likely to make wise decisions.”