Surgical Checklist Essay

460 Words2 Pages

Checklists are essential instruments while performing complex and critical tasks. Checklists are widely used across various industries and aviation, medical and pharmaceutical industries are some of the notable industries who practices checklist culture. The history of checklist traces to the aviation industry, which was formulated to ensure safety. The checklist is a type of formal document which is drafted to identify, plan, organize and prioritize a set of information or tasks which ensure the productivity and safety of a system (Federal Aviation Administration). Healthcare professionals are often challenged with various complex tasks in their field of everyday practice. It is speculated that during complex situations experts face two key challenges. The first one involves the constraints put on the memory …show more content…

For this purpose, a multinational study was conducted across different economic and healthcare demographics with the aim to evaluate the utility of checklists in providing effective and safe care. The study indicated that the use of surgical checklists increased the compliance of therapeutic interventions by 65% and reduced the by 50% (Haynes et al, 2006). The use of checklists is vital in the medical sector due to the complexity of treatment options and the diversity of patients treated. Each patient has different personal needs which should be captured through checklists to maintain uniformity of care provisions. This means that a checklist must be flexible to change, modifications and recommendations under various circumstances. Thus, checklists are not sacrosanct documents and should be modified to bring about positive outcomes. These outcomes may increase the productivity of an organization, or an operation or a clinical care delivery