Hospitals in pursuit of excellence

Checklists Improve Patient Safety

The aviation industry has successfully used checklists to ensure safe air travel for passengers and crew. Now health care professionals are using checklists more frequently to provide safe care for patients. Checklists have improved processes for patient care in operating rooms, intensive care and trauma units as well as for hospital discharges and patient transfers, while reducing complications and preventing deaths. A new HPOE guide, “Checklists to Improve Patient Safety,” includes checklists for 10 areas of patient harm being targeted by the CMS Partnership for Patients initiative and Hospital Engagement Networks. These focus areas include adverse drug events, early elective deliveries, injuries from falls and immobility, hospital-acquired ulcers, preventable readmissions and surgical site infections. Each of these checklists, developed by Cynosure Health, identifies the top 10 evidence-based interventions that hospitals can implement and test to prevent harm. In addition, the AHA/HRET Hospital Engagement Network website has a change package that supports each checklist topic. The change packages provide guidance for implementing best practices, including suggested aim statements, lists of change ideas and tools, detailed steps and driver diagrams.

View the HPOE video interview with Atul Gawande, MD,  on the importance of checklists.

View the HHN video interview on the importance of checklists.