The Checklist

This is a very important article for anyone ivolved in medicine to read.
Given my predilection for notes and personal checklists, this article resonated in terms of the value of maintaining checklisted protocols in the work envirnoment. Every one of my staff will be given a copy of this article (and sign off on a checklist indicating the article has been read)...

If something so simple can transform intensive care, what else can it do?

A decade ago, Israeli scientists published a study in which engineers observed patient care in I.C.U.s for twenty-four-hour stretches. They found that the average patient required a hundred and seventy-eight individual actions per day, ranging from administering a drug to suctioning the lungs, and every one of them posed risks. Remarkably, the nurses and doctors were observed to make an error in just one per cent of these actions—but that still amounted to an average of two errors a day with every patient. Intensive care succeeds only when we hold the odds of doing harm low enough for the odds of doing good to prevail. This is hard. There are dangers simply in lying unconscious in bed for a few days.