A Review on The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
“Man is fallible, but many men are less so.”
In his New York Times Bestseller, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, Atul Gawande addresses a problem even the most skilled humans have been struggling to solve: while medical practitioners are becoming more and more specialized, these specialists are making the simplest mistakes. “We continue to have upwards of 150,000 deaths following surgery every year – more than three times the number of road traffic fatalities. Moreover, research has consistently showed that at least half our deaths and major complications are avoidable,” he says (Gawande, 31). In other words, these people are capable of fixing their mistakes, but they are simply too busy to remember. How could these people, handling multiple complicated situations simultaneously throughout all their days, afford to remember simple textbook facts?
The answer, proposes Gawande: a checklist. A precise and concise checklist that addresses the most basic procedures can eliminate a surgeon’s need to remember the calcium levels of a heart patient or the catheter in another. Relying on a checklist to clear the simple necessities of a surgery allows for the quick thinking of a surgeon to solve more complex issues. How does it work? Follow along with some of the checklists that surgeons have been using to help save lives.
DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC:
To learn more, our team recommends finding Atul Gawande’s book The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right at your local library’s online ebook and audiobook selection. Interested with what surgeons have done with checklists? Read more in Peter Pronovost and Eric Vohr’s book called Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals: How One Doctor's Checklist Can Help Us Change Health Care from the Inside Out.
