Surgery Checklist Reduces Surgery Deaths
Eight hospitals reduced the number of deaths from surgery by more than 40% by using a simple 19-step pre-surgery checklist.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/135487.php
The report in the New England Journal of Medicine says that if all hospitals adopted the checklist, they could save tens of thousands of lives and $20 billion ANNUALLY.
This same article appeared in the January 15 edition of USA TODAY. This article goes on to state that:
– Surgeons are good at making sure they do most of the things most of the time, but not very good at doing all of the things all of the time.
– An operation’s success depends far more on teamwork and communications skills than on an individual surgeon’s skill.
– The checklist takes about 2 minutes to complete.
– It is modeled on checklists used on the aviation industry.
– The checklist has nothing to do with high tech solutions, instead focusing on basic safety measures.
It is almost frustrating to read an article like this. TapRooT® has been teaching these exact principles for 20 years, and now the World Health Organization funds a study that repeats exactly what our TapRooT® investigators would find if they had conducted their own investigation. In fact, after reading the article, I’d swear the author had just attended a TapRooT® course. You can scan through this article and attach the TapRooT® root causes directly to his individual statements.
Luckily, I’m more of an optimist. This study proves that we can make a difference and save lives right now. Even the most basic TapRooT® investigations have the opportunity to fnd and correct these types of relatively simple mistakes. All we have to do is DO IT!
New England Journal of Medicine article:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMsa0810119
Checklist (including video of proper use):
http://www.who.int/patientsafety/safesurgery/en/index.html
