1.0 Background Surgical procedures are high risk events and patients may suffer complications or die post operatively. A report from an on-going patient safety campaign "In Safe Hands" lead by the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services reveals that approximately 16 % of all Norwegian hospital admissions in 2010 involved an adverse event (AE) (Deilkås, 2011). A review study on AEs in 2008 included a wide range of in-hospital patients from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America (US) (de Vries et al., 2008). 9 % of the patients experienced an AE, with 7. 4 % of these ending fatally. The majority of the AEs occurred during surgical treatment or was related to drug administration. The authors claimed that almost half of these could have been prevented if checklists covering the entire surgical pathway had been used (de Vries et al., 2008). Implementation of such a system, called the Surgical Patient Safety System (SURPASS) did in fact result in a reduction of in-hospital morbidity (from 27.3% to 16.7%) and mortality (from 1.5 % to 0.8 %) (de Vries, 2010).