"The Checklist" is a great article for a couple of reasons.  The sheer simplicity of a checklist which elevates the level of care shows how much more the health care industry must do to provide the right care at the right time.  Instead of focusing on more technology and therapies we must also concentrate on the process of delivering care and the coordination of care among providers.  

What prevents us from achieving these gains is that our culture in medicine views checklists, standards, and guidelines, as dumbing down doctors into cooks and chefs  instead of seeing them as assets to help us in a role that continues to extraordinarily more complex.  Gawande correctly notes we in medicine should "be ready to accept the virtues of regimentation".  Time will tell if that will ever occur.

I'd just like to say that I think your blog is fantastic.

I think that checklists can be useful in the development of standard work.

I work with one organization that changed the way that they procured the materials required to put in a Central Line. Historically the organization would order Lines, Gloves, Sutures and so on and so forth separately and when a line was needed to be inserted a nurse or other professional would have to go around and obtain each of these ensuring that they never forgot to wash their hands, obtain a drape etc.

A supplier approached them and asked whether they could provide lines as a supplier, the organization said no and the supplier asked what they could do to become an approved supplier.

The supplier went away and came back with a kit. The kit was all the materials required to put in a line in a sterile drape, it included gloves, sutures, the silver line, blades and a custom made drape with a window that the patient can see out of and a hole for the line to be inserted through.

The supplier agreed to supply this kit with all the materials (including one pair of gloves of every size) for the same price as their competitors supplier just the line.

The benefit of this is that the organization only needs  to order one material (rather placing multiple orders for gloves, lines etc) and when a line needs to be inserted a staff member only needs to pick up one pack.

The risk of forgetting a specific piece of kit is simply eliminated, it would be impossible to insert a line without having the right materials in the right place at the right time.

I think that this when combined with the checklist is an enormous move forwards in the development of standard work.

I don't know if lines are provided in this type of kit format in the US but I am happy to provide you with photo's illustrating them.

Regards

Andrew

Wow-Checklists!  Can't wait for the evidence based folks to weigh in:

Rapid Response Systems: A systematic review

Rapid Response Teams: Ready for Prime Time?

It is so hard to determine tone on the web, but I'm guessing my friend "WRS" is being a bit ironic re: evidence-based medicine and checklists -- implying that asking for evidence for safety interventions like checklists (or, by inference, Rapid Response Teams) is unrealistic and would slow down safety efforts. It is a familiar concern.

But Pronovost's work is living evidence that EBM and safety can go hand in hand, which is part of what makes it so impressive. Peter certainly "believed" that checklists were a good idea, but he did "small tests of change" at Hopkins, honing the intervention, following them with a rigorous NEJM study at more than 100 hospitals in Michigan that proved that the hypothesis was, in fact true.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/355/26/2725

He has done similar work proving the value of goal cards in the ICU:

Improving communication in the ICU using daily goals.

Pronovost's work demonstrates that patient safety interventions -- yes, even checklists -- can be studied using strong scientific methods.

Readers of this post should be aware of a recent obtuse and dispiriting decision by the HHS affecting the continuation of the Michigan study. It is explained and discussed (critically) by Atul Gawande in his New York Times op-ed, published online today.