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> Utterly unthinkable, isn't it? No. Ignaz Semmelweis faced it in the 1800s for daring to suggest (what we know know as germs) made people sick and hand washin
by MBCook 4y ago
> Utterly unthinkable, isn't it?
No. Ignaz Semmelweis faced it in the 1800s for daring to suggest (what we know know as germs) made people sick and hand washing could drastically reduce medical complications. He was able to prove it too.
By the end was locked up in an asylum for his ‘crimes’.
Want more recent?
How many stories have you heard of instruments or gauze or whatever left in surgical patients? Of operating on the wrong part or person?
People are fallible. But checklists help a ton. We know that for sure. Why is aviation obsessed with following them? Because they work to increase safety.
Surgeons have resisted them. I don’t know the current state of it, but they were making that exact “good surgeons don’t need it” argument. I remember it being a plot point on an episode of a medical drama (ER? Or maybe Grey’s Anatomy).
There are probably tons of other examples in other fields.
- p-e-w 4y agoSemmelweis is ancient history. He was active at a time when regulations and "best practices" simply weren't a thing anywhere. Surgeons resisting checklists is new to me. Do you have a reference other than a TV show? My understanding until now was that checklists are extensively used in medicine.
- themenomen 4y agoThat IS the central issue though, processes, techniques, and so on are not a THING until they are. And something has to change for that to happen.
- timeinput 4y agoHere are a couple articles to start pulling threads on > Despite all the evidence, Gawande admits that even he was skeptical that using a checklist in everyday practice would help to save the lives of his patients. > "I didn't expect it," Gawande says with a chuckle. "It's massively improved the kind of results that I'm getting. When we implemented this checklist in eight other hospitals, I started using it because I didn't want to be a hypocrite. But hey, I'm at Harvard, did I need a checklist? No." https://www.npr.org/2010/01/05/122226184/atul-gawandes-checklist-for-surgery-success https://www.npr.org/2010/01/05/122226184/atul-gawandes-check... Not sure if this supports the reluctance idea since it says 93% use checklists, but most surgeons don't think it improves safety. > Of the 353 survey respondents, 93.6% use SSCs and 62.6% would want one used in their own child’s operation, but only 54.7% felt that checklists improve patient safety. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6221594/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6221594/
- irishsultan 4y agoThat first quote (as well as the rest of the article) supports the view that people tend to underestimate the usefulness of procedures they are not yet using and especially to overestimate their own abilities. It also shows that social pressure is the opposite of what it was in Semelweiss time, even people who feel they are above such things start using them (and then some of them get convinced that they were wrong). The part you quoted from your second link directly contradicts your claim that most surgeons don't think it improves safety (even if the 54.7% is among the 93.6% that use it that still gives 51% that think it improves safety).
- gjadi 4y agoThe usefulness of checklist in medical and the resistance to it is mentioned several times in The Checklist Manifesto. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Checklist_Manifesto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Checklist_Manifesto
- ilyt 4y agoWe have smaller version of that with masks in pandemic. Cheap and easy means to reduce problem by a bit ? Nah, let's not do that /s