4 ms·
Atul Gawande wrote an article for the New Yorker in 2007 about checklists for inserting central lines in hospital ORs which elaborates on some of the points in
by karzeem 17y ago
Atul Gawande wrote an article for the New Yorker in 2007 about checklists for inserting central lines in hospital ORs which elaborates on some of the points in this FT piece:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_...
The central line checklist was extremely basic — almost condescendingly so — and some doctors resisted it as a waste of time. Here's the checklist, from the article:
(1) Wash hands with soap
(2) Clean the patient’s skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic
(3) Put sterile drapes over the entire patient
(4) Wear a sterile mask, hat, gown, and gloves
(5) Put a sterile dressing over the catheter site once the line is in
That's it. Very, very basic. And yet one ICU that implemented it saw central line infection rates drop by 66 percent, and that's representative of the drop in infection rates at other hospitals that started using it.
- cwan 17y agoHe went on to turn the article into a book that was published last month: http://www.amazon.com/Checklist-Manifesto-How-Things-Right/dp/0805091742/ http://www.amazon.com/Checklist-Manifesto-How-Things-Right/d... This is something we're trying to apply to our operations. Definitely not an easy task to convince everyone to use them and like the article says, many people think checklists are beneath them so it's helpful when I can point to data in medicine or now like the article, venture capital.
- vdm 17y agoLoved the article when I first read it, and didn't know about the book. Thanks! PS The OP is actually an extract from this book, which I didn't see until I read to the end.
- pierrefar 17y agoA friend of mine is spearheading trials in some UK hospitals and the early results are ridiculously good. There doesn't seem to be that much resistance to this idea though. When we talked about it, the only good explanation we came up with is that doctors have heard about this and know how good it can be and so are open to trying it, even begrudgingly.
- jeffcoat 17y agoI'm a checklist fan. Here's the don't-break-the-build checklist I have posted on the wall beside me: 1) No ? in 'svn status' 2) Checkstyle accepts all changed files 3) 'svn update' 4) Unit tests pass 5) 'svn commit' As you say -- condescendingly simple. And astonishingly helpful.