PURPOSE
This study was conducted to develop a timeout protocol as the process of patients verification in the operating room, and to evaluate its effects. METHODS: The timeout protocol was developed based on the experience of practices and the universal protocol of JCAHO 2004. The subjects of this study were 192 surgical members working in the operating room at an university hospital in Daegu, Korea. RESULTS: The timeout protocol was developed in six steps; participants verification, encouragement of compliance, verification of right 3 PSP, agreement of surgical team members, verification of the parties to a patient, patient agreement. The data which have been resulted from the experimental group show significantly higher than those of control group as follows; cognition(t = -6.580, p = .000), contents of performance; progress of anesthesiologist as leader(chi-square = 29.029, p = .000), verification of right patient, right site and right procedure(chi-square = 40.663, p = .000), participation of surgical team(chi-square = 68.412, p = .000), and the number of cases of performance(chi-square = 242.900, p = .000). CONCLUSION: It suggests that medical accidents caused by failures in a preoperative verification process can be prevented if a timeout is conducted active involvement and effective communication among surgical team members for a final verification of the correct patient, procedure, and site.