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What’s something simple that can make your work dramatically more effective and error-free?

Eric Barker
February 21, 2011

A checklist. Atul Gawande tells the story of how much of a difference checklists made in a hospital ICU.

Via The New Yorker:

Pronovost and his colleagues monitored what happened for a year afterward. The results were so dramatic that they werenât sure whether to believe them: the ten-day line-infection rate went from eleven per cent to zero. So they followed patients for fifteen more months. Only two line infections occurred during the entire period. They calculated that, in this one hospital, the checklist had prevented forty-three infections and eight deaths, and saved two million dollars in costs.

Pronovost recruited some more colleagues, and they made some more checklists. One aimed to insure that nurses observe patients for pain at least once every four hours and provide timely pain medication. This reduced the likelihood of a patientâs experiencing untreated pain from forty-one per cent to three per cent. They tested a checklist for patients on mechanical ventilation, making sure that, for instance, the head of each patientâs bed was propped up at least thirty degrees so that oral secretions couldnât go into the windpipe, and antacid medication was given to prevent stomach ulcers. The proportion of patients who didnât receive the recommended care dropped from seventy per cent to four per cent; the occurrence of pneumonias fell by a quarter; and twenty-one fewer patients died than in the previous year. The researchers found that simply having the doctors and nurses in the I.C.U. make their own checklists for what they thought should be done each day improved the consistency of care to the point that, within a few weeks, the average length of patient stay in intensive care dropped by half.

Gawande has written a book on the subject, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.

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Post Information
Title What’s something simple that can make your work dramatically more effective and error-free?
Author Eric Barker
Date February 21, 2011 12:18 PM UTC (13 years ago)
Blog bakadesuyo
Archive Link https://theredarchive.com/blog/bakadesuyo/whats-something-simple-that-can-make-your-work.16154
https://theredarchive.com/blog/16154
Original Link https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2011/02/whats-something-simple-that-can-make-your-wor/
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