The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

When I initially read an NPR review about this book, I was immediately interested. Not only is Gawande attempting to present solutions to preventable failures in the medical professions, but in other business environments as well. The Checklist Manifesto is Gawande’s non-fiction account of how to construct and implement checklists in meaningful ways. His particular area of interest is that of safe surgery, but he also offers examples in construction, aviation and investments, to name a few.

The style of this book is very anecdotal. He immediately grabs the reader’s attention by sharing a couple gory surgery horror stories about failures to address key steps or pieces of information in operations. He continues this pattern throughout the book, each section tells a story about how he learned about checklists in a variety of settings and how each checklist is effective or not. His journey is that of a surgeon who is researching checklists for the WHO; he tells us how he came up with the idea, how his checklists were constructed (and re-constructed), and how checklists have measurably changed surgical practices in several of the world’s hospitals.

As an aside, I can barely fathom how Gawande manages to write books in between all of his other jobs. He is a surgeon, a director for patient safety with the WHO (World Health Organization), Harvard professor and father. Any one of these tasks seems like it could be all-consuming. He must be very organized – I suppose he uses checklists to keep track of it all.

Side note: This is not Gawande’s first book. Check out Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science (RD 27.35 .G39 A3 2002 )