When I was learning to fly, one of the first things I was taught was the use of checklists. Checklists contain trivial things that are supposedly self-evident. Stuff like this, for the Cessna 172 that I used to fly:
Aircraft position INTO WIND Brakes APPLY & HOLD Doors CLOSED & LATCHED Flight controls FREE & CORRECT Fuel selector valve BOTH Elevator trim TAKEOFF
So who in his right mind would forget to close the doors, you might ask, or open a fuel valve? But the fact is, people do, and people died as a result. Pilots, gung-ho folks that they are, were nevertheless humble enough to realize this, and the use of checklists has been common practice pretty much since the dawn of flying.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for hospital operating rooms. It seems that surgical death rates can be cut by up to one third through the simple use of a checklist… so why hasn’t this been done before? Is it ignorance, arrogance by the medical community, or a combination of both?
In any case, introducing checklists in operating rooms is a no-cost improvement that can save billions of dollars a year not to mention a number of lives.