No Matter How Hard We Work and How Smart People Are, We Will Have Failures

Yes, It's a follow-up on Dr.Atul Gawande's Checklist Manifesto (via FS):

“No matter how hard we work and how smart people are, we will have failures. And the evidence is, a team checklist can markedly reduce these failures,” Gawande said.


The routines stem from cockpit checklists and aviation safety work. Gawande says it never gets old for him, three years after he began using it.


At first, “I put it in in because I didn’t want to be a hypocrite. Did I think I needed a checklist at the Brigham? No. I wanted to put it in because we were telling Tanzania to do it,” he said. “But I have not gotten through a week of surgery without the checklist catching something.”


“Something” might be an antibiotic that should have been given. Or someone saying the patient previously had back surgery so they should protect his back while he’s on the table. The point is to make well-trained people better, Gawande said.


About a quarter of US hospitals have a version of the checklist in place. Writing in an editorial also appearing in the New England Journal, Dr. John Birkmeyer of the University of Michigan says the Dutch trial should erase any doubts about the common-sense tool.


“Checklists seems to have crossed the threshold from good idea to standard of care,” he said.