Atul Gawande

Checklists seem to provide protection against such failures. They remind us of the minimum necessary steps and make them explicit. They not only offer the possibility of verification but also instill a kind of discipline of higher performance.

Everywhere I looked, the evidence seemed to point to the same conclusion. There seemed no field or profession where checklists might not help. And that might even include my own.

It is common to misconceive how checklists function in complex lines of work. They are not comprehensive how-to guides, whether for building a skyscraper or getting a plane out of trouble. They are quick and simple tools aimed to buttress the skills of expert professionals. And by remaining swift and usable and resolutely modest, they are saving thousands upon thousands of lives.

Checklists, he found, established a higher baseline of performance.

What experts like Dan Boorman have recognized is that the reason for delay is not usually laziness or unwillingness. The reason is more often that the necessary knowledge has not been translated into a simple, usable, and systematic form.

Then we asked the staff one more question. ‘If you were having an operation,’ we asked, ‘would you want the checklist to be used?’ A full 93% said yes.