Surgeons could save lives, $20B by using checklist

Eight hospitals reduced the number of deaths from surgery by more than 40% by using a checklist that helps doctors and nurses avoid errors, according to a report released online today in the New England Journal of Medicine. If all hospitals used the same checklist, they could save tens of thousands of lives and $20 billion in medical costs each year,

The 19-point checklist has nothing to do with high technology. Instead, it focuses on basic safety measures, such as ensuring that patients get antibiotics to prevent infection and requiring that all members of the team introduce themselves. "An operation involves hundreds of steps with lots of team members," Gawande says. "We're good at making sure we do most of these things most of the time, but we're not good at doing all of them all of the time."

The study shows that an operation's success depends far more on teamwork and clear communication than the brilliance of individual doctors, says co-author Alex Haynes, also of Harvard. And that's good news, he says, because it means hospitals everywhere can improve. Researchers modeled the checklist, which takes only two minutes to go through, after ones used by the aviation industry, which has dramatically reduced the number of crashes in recent years.

Courtesy of USA Today

Steve - how easy would it be to follow a checklist? The only reason I can come up with for not following the check list is arrogance. A recent study also showed that a nurse checklist for ICU patients saw a dramatic drop in infection-related complications. This is elementary stuff "my dear Watson."