You've Got to Read Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto

I just finished reading The Check list Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Dr. Atul Gawande, and it is excellent. Everyone should read it. Gawande is an incredible guy: a surgeon at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, a MacArthur Fellow, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, a writer of books and New Yorker articles, a great story teller, and the leader of the World Health Organization's Safe Surgery Saves Lives programs, among other things. Essentially his argument is that because medicine, like almost everything these days, is extremely complex and involves a huge body of knowledge, it is essential to develop and implement checklists to cut down on human error. [Frankly, I'm pretty shocked that doctors don't already have the checklists he recommends. ]

His checklist concept goes far beyond a simple list of tasks. Through well-told stories, many from the aviation and construction industries, Gawande demonstrates how a well-crafted and executed checklist is a vital backbone for a group working to accomplish a complex task. A checklist engenders increased communication, discipline and trust within the team. Power is dispersed, not centralized (this, he says, is very important in modern-day construction where there are so many specialized trades). A well-implemented checklist empowers all members of the team because everyone has responsibility for making sure that each item has been taken care of and for stopping the process if they see a problem. Pausing to review the list gives the team a few seconds to stop and make sure they are focused and that each one has paid attention to mundane details ... details that save lives (lowers infection rates, etc.). He offers many examples of success. He identifies one really simple task that I can't believe isn't standard operating procedure -- everyone in the operating room has to introduce themselves to each other before they start cutting up the patient. Apparently, the OR teams don’t always know each other.

I'm planning to send this book to all of my doctors!!! And clearly if we are to be empowered patients, we have to think about having our own checklists. Thoughts??