Total quality management in plastic surgery.

Background: Quality management in plastic surgery has been limited to audit reports of individual clinical conditions, procedures and their outcomes, mortality rates, or other individual aspects of the field.

Methods: This work was done as a part of the mission assigned to us from the Military Medical Directorate to work on and develop the policies and standards of the practice of plastic surgery in the Saudi military hospitals. It is an overview of auditing in plastic surgery with a new expansion vision of the concept of total quality management in plastic surgery including the executable component (new data collection forms) that leads to the complete quality cycle. In addition, a pilot study over one of the main referral units of the military hospitals, Riyadh Armed Forces Hospital, is included.

Results: The various suggested audit and the monthly report forms are presented. The study of the unit revealed that the most frequently operated region was the head and neck, followed by the hand. Major operations constituted 31.3% of the surgeries done, and there was an overall negative correlation between age and hospital stay.

Conclusions: A general approach and unifying the auditing process facilitates comparisons between departments in the same country and between different countries in the globe.