CERTAIN ED is a project aimed at developing an Emergency Department Safety Checklist to decrease the rate of medical errors in a variety of emergency medicine settings.

The Emergency Department (ED) is an environment at high risk of patient harm due to medical errors. These errors can lead to an increase in patients’ morbidity and mortality, delays in care, longer length of stay and waiting time in the ED, and higher rates of hospitalization, intensive care unit transfer, and ED return visits.

Checklists have been applied to different medical environments and have been shown to reduce medical errors, improving patient outcomes. This novel ED Safety Checklist (CERTAIN ED) will be designed as a universal safety framework for all patients admitted to the ED, independent of triage category and presenting problem. It will be formatted to facilitate rapid review at critical "pause points" during the flow of patient care, to double check that all key actions and safety tasks at risk of omission have already been performed.

This checklist will be developed by an international consensus of experts in emergency medicine and patient safety through a 3-round modified Delphi process. The Delphi panel is now composed of 80 clinicians from 6 continents, 34 countries, and 54 cities, with equal representation of high-income and low and middle-income countries and participation of physicians, nurses, pharmacists and healthcare administrators.

Join our team

Thank you to those who have participated in the first round of the Delphi process! The recruitment for the Delphi process is currently closed; however, if you are interesting in joining this global effort, you can contact us using this form.