Utstein Surgical Indicators

In 2019, in partnership with the Laerdal Foundation, WFSA convened a “Metrics and Reporting Criteria for Surgery, Anaesthesia, & Obstetrics (SOA) Patient Safety” meeting in Utstein Abbey in Norway to undertake the first comprehensive review of the six indicators developed by The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery. The 36 invited global experts refined the existing indicators down to five – surgical volume; geospatial access; workforce; perioperative mortality; and catastrophic expenditure.

In 2021/2022

The consensus reached at the Utstein Conference, which included refined indicators, approaches to data collection and reporting criteria necessary for patient safety, was published in PLoS Medicine. 

Now in its implementation state, five multidisciplinary working groups are creating a ‘How To’ manual for practitioners and policymakers to define data collection approaches for each of the five indicators.

2022 and beyond

A follow-up Utstein conference in September 2022 will finalise the data collection guide and plan for the piloting of the manual in 2023. Next steps will be to integrate the indicators and manual into national and regional data collection processes, and to facilitate and encourage their use at national, regional, and global levels.