The Checklist Manifesto

English language

Published Sept. 21, 2011 by Metropolitan Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-312-43000-9

(6 reviews)

We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies—neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third.

In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness …

We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies—neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third.

In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. He explains how checklists actually work to prompt striking and immediate improvements. And he follows the checklist revolution into fields well beyond medicine, from disaster response to investment banking, skyscraper construction, and businesses of all kinds.

An intellectual adventure in which lives are lost and saved and one simple idea makes a tremendous difference, The Checklist Manifesto is essential reading for anyone working to get things right.

3 editions

technicat reviewed The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Really important read, put it on your list

5 stars

This is a must-read for anyone facing point of no return situations, and not even life or death cases as discussed in the book like surgery (with personal experience from the author) and aviation (the inspiration for applying checklists to surgery). Even in software, where we now take for granted checklists of the automated kind, obviously there are cases of bad releases, bad deployments, and bad ideas (and actually, some of those could kill people). Like anything else, the idea can be used badly (I've had a manager use a checklist as a power trip tool), but at its most effective it changes culture so that teams (not just a lone hero as, the book points out, the press tends to highlight, because hey great teamwork doesn't make headlines) know what to do in an emergency and better yet, avoids them.