The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

“The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right” by Atul Gawande (2009)

This book shows the benefits of writing things down, compiling procedures into a checklist, and adhering to it during times of intense pressure.

The author covers different professions and how they've successfully incorporated checklists into their daily operation. He covers...

• Surgery
• Pilots checklist
• Patient vitals chart
• Project management for building construction
• Emergency Management
• Encouraging proper higeine in developing countries
• Deciding to invest in a company

It also goes way to into detail of some kinda gross surgeries. Got kinda needless after like the 4th surgery.

I've been saying this for years. I love checklists. I love creating standard operating procedures. I've done so for every job I've had since graduating from college. It's so much easier to just write down how to do things than to use recall. I'm lazy and forgetful. So documenting and adhering to procedure is a no-brainer.

The author helped craft the surgery checklists for the WHO in ~2007. Literally saving lives just by maintaining a basic checklist of procedures that sometimes get overlooked, resulting in a decrease in efficacy and increase in death.

It's insane to me that the revolutionary concept of...writing things down and following the set procedure...has successfully PLUMMETED the rate of surgery complications whenever implemented. And this revolutionary concept is somehow less than 20 years old? Like...my god. The realm of medicine really seems to have just recently evolved out of its infancy. I guess surgery before GWB was a crapshoot of renegade surgeons who just trusted their instincts. Insane.

Regarding the emergency management, the author talks about the failures of Katrina response in New Orleans. He points out that the most effective solutions involved flattening hierarchies and providing support via mutual aid at the local level. He then fails to see how this shows not just the failure of the federal government in that circumstance, but a failure of our economic system as a whole. Oh well.

Book was short. I really liked it.