Viraj's Weblog

Excellent interview with Atul Gawande on improving health care. Having doctors go through a checklist decreases mortality by almost 50%. Such a simple strategy taken from the airline industry. A quote:

DR. ATUL GAWANDE: Well, in all of my writing, I’m interested in where the individual meets systems. And in medicine, what I’ve noticed as a surgeon is that we have become overwhelmed by complexity. We have trouble getting things right, because the volume of knowledge we’ve created in science has overwhelmed our ability as individuals to follow through. And we’ve seen ideas like “use a checklist” as a sign of weakness. We’ve not gone where aviation has gone in embracing these kinds of ideas. But for people on the receiving ends of care, they see the gaps, they see things falling through. And we’ve been slow to embrace some of these very simple ideas.