To be Avoided
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Imagine waking from surgery to find that the wrong leg had been amputated. That would leave you without a leg to stand on. An Austrian surgeon that made the error last May is in a similar position. The surgeon claimed human error which wasn’t well viewed by the court awarding damages.
Medicine, emergency response and aviation, are all fields who have widely adopted checklists as a way of reducing (preferably eliminating) errors like these.
Checklists make a massive difference where there are one or more of these factors at play:
High consequences for a mistake, like marking the wrong leg, forgetting the fire hose, or not closing the aircraft door.
Reliable repeatability, like having everything you need in the operating theatre, on the fire truck, or in the cockpit.
Mundane tasks, like double checking patient details, fire truck maintenance, and pre take off checks.
Rapid response required, like a patient going into cardiac arrest, someone trapped in a burning building, or an engine failure over the Hudson River.
Lengthy time intervals between occurrences, like any of the above professions doing annual compliance checks.
A checklist removes mental load from some activities, increasing the Capacity for responding to others. While the Austrian Surgeon’s claim that the ‘wrong leg’ was human error is probably true, the negligence comes from overlooking one or more critical checklists specifically designed to avoid such mistakes.
Where could you benefit from a good checklist?
Some examples might be:
Reporting
Recruitment
Preparing to present
Responding to complaints
Customer service
Making products
Frontloading your week
Holidays