Synoptic surgical reporting for breast cancer surgery: an innovation in knowledge translation.

Background: Extensive literature identifies that the quality of surgery not only influences morbidity and mortality but also long-term survival and function. This mandates that we develop a system to capture this information on a real-time basis.

Methods: A synoptic surgical template for breast cancer was created; this was digitized and made available to all surgeons in Alberta.

Results: The data reference 1,392 breast cancer procedures. Ninety-one percent of reports were submitted within 1 hour and 97% of reports were submitted within 24 hours. Fifty-two percent of reports were completed within 5 minutes. Information quality with respect to completeness of staging information was present in 89%. Eighty-four percent complied with practice guidelines and 89% of breast surgeons adopted the template. Seventy-five percent of users were moderately or highly satisfied with the system.

Conclusions: The experience with the development and implementation of synoptic surgical reporting has proven to be a successful tool for generating quality surgical data.