Research news: Surgical errors cut by checklist

The News:
Surgical errors cut by checklist
Possible savings in billions, study says
By Ceci Connolly The Washington Post
Posted: 01/15/2009 12:30:00 AM MST

WASHINGTON — Surgical teams that followed a basic cockpit-style checklist in the operating room, from confirming the patient's name to discussing expected blood loss, reduced the rate of deaths and complications by more than one-third, according to a year-long, eight-nation project being released today.
Surgeons, it seems, are discovering what airline pilots learned decades ago: The human brain can't remember everything, so it's best to focus on the complicated challenges and leave the simple reminders to a cheat sheet.
"You take something as complex as surgery, and you think there isn't a lot that can be done to make it better," said Atul Gawande, a Boston physician who led the study being published in the New England Journal of Medicine. "A checklist seems like a no-brainer, but the size of the benefit is dramatic." The low-cost, low-tech intervention tested in eight hospitals around the globe could have enormous financial implications as well.
If every operating room in the United States adopted the surgical checklist, the nation could save between $15 billion and $25 billion a year in the costs of treating avoidable complications, according to calculations by the authors.
In the one-year pilot study involving 7,600 patients, the hospitals saw the rate of serious complications fall from 11 percent to 7 percent. In-patient deaths declined by more than 40 percent overall, with the most drastic reductions occurring in hospitals with fewer resources.
For the study, which was prompted by the World Health Organization, hospitals in eight countries adopted a 19-step checklist in non-cardiac surgeries. The project involved rural and urban hospitals with diverse populations in cities such as Seattle, London, New Delhi, Manila and Ifakara, Tanzania. Read on...

The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the New England Journal of Medicine.