An EHR Implementation of The Checklist Manifesto

John D. HalamkaBoston Physician Atul Gawande wrote The Checklist Manifesto in 2009  stressing that medicine should adopt “pilot’s checklists” to ensure that operating room teams are “ready for takeoff” before a scapel is ever opened.

BIDMC implemented The Checklist Manifesto ideas in software in 2010.

Here’s the “Time Out” done among all OR team members before a case beings - it includes a list of staff participating in the timeout, the agreed upon procedure, the verification of consent, appropriately marked operative site, patient identity verification, and best practices for prophylaxis.  
 

We also have procedure specific checklists for each operating room role.   Here are transplant checklists for surgeons and nurses



Here are spine surgery checklists for surgeons and nurses



Many complain that electronic health records create burden without significant benefit.   Implementing checklists into the workflow of EHRs in the operating room is high value, ensuring good team communication, while also reducing error.   A win/win for everyone!

An EHR implementation of The Checklist Manifesto was authored by Dr. John D. Halamka and published in his blog, Life as a Healthcare CIO. It is reprinted by Open Health News under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US). The original post can be found here.