The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande [Book Summary]


Visualize being getting treatment for heart disorders during 1950. Therapeutic understanding of the reason for heart issues was really scarce during that time that you’d basically be given for relieving pain and resting in bed. Furthermore, when you wished to smoke during your improvement, that was totally okay as well.

Luckily, human understanding has really improved now. As small as the past 60 years, doctors were quite inexperienced regarding treating heart disorders; however, nowadays we have various techniques of functioning so, as well as blood pressure drugs, cardiac medications, and also surgeries of the open heart. Also, we have a full host of methods to refrain from heart issues initially, like cholesterol decreasing medications and more exercise.

But, in difficult fields such as medicine, our wide understanding base has to turn into a sword twofold. As stated by the WHO, we now have more than 13,000 defined syndromes, illnesses, and injuries. Include the 1000s of medications and measures present to heal victims to that and we realize that not a single med specialist or team may probably learn the entire medical understanding we have gathered.

This brings us an issue of ineptitude. Meaning, we are finding it hard to constantly recall, declutter and use the appropriate understanding in the appropriate manner. Nurses and surgeons similar are under huge pressure to learn the newest medical technology, handle several patients all at one time, and do the huge amount of steps required to perform difficult medical approaches with exactness. While doing this, at the same time they have to deal with the unforeseen reactions and results that happen when handling people that are sick.

Definitely, a new type of technique is required when we want to utilize our huge medical understanding and prevent likely deadly human mistakes.


Buy this book from Amazon



Chapter 1 – Severe; however, easily avoidable errors could be refrained from with checklists.


In San Francisco, a functioning theater group encountered terrible situations at the time they treated a person for the thing they believed was a flimsy knife injury. That was just following to a physician’s cut at the time the individual began spilling out lots of blood, that the team realized the injury counted in feet. That was, for real, a blade wound that person had gotten at a celebration of Halloween. Unluckily, prior to the surgery, no medical person had thought to inquire about the type of weapon that had been used in the stabbing.

Although the person survived that injury; but, errors and wrong data in medicine occur with terrifying order and may lead to severe difficulties or lives. In the US, more than 50000000 surgeries are done every year, and over 150000 clients die following the surgery. From various studies, about 1/2 of these complexities and kills are preventable.



Therefore, the way to minimize the errors being made?

Instead of giving millions for the newest medical advancements, the solution is much easier: utilizing checklists.

A checklist is as easy as it sounds: it has been a sequence of steps to be done when doing a procedure. Remarkably, it has the clear steps – things that everybody should realize – that have usually been the most important and still not remembered or canceled. A checklist serves as a security web to ensure we get the simple stuff, like asking, “What type of tool was utilized?” prior to continuing any further. As soon as the simple thing is ticked off, we become better prepared mentally to deal with the more difficult or unpredictable problems that are exceptional to every client.

When a checklist is utilized in the previously mentioned bayonet wound incident, the doctors could be better equipped for any terrible, bloody surprises.


Chapter 2 – Checklists have to be as concise as they could be, comprising every important step and give no space for confusion.


It’s very easy to laugh at checklists, specifically as a lot of us would see them as scratched prompts or praised schedules. But, when they have all the important steps and are brief and useful, these lists turn out to be strong mechanisms.

A significant part of checklists is they have the “main points” of a course of action. They have been the stages that are simply overlooked; however, if not done, it could be terrible. For instance, this might be a prompt to know a client’s hypersensitivities prior to the surgery.

Though they have to comprise every significant item, checklists don’t need to be detailed guides. A veteran aeronaut named Daniel Boorman who forms aeronautics lists to Boeing, mentions that about 5-9 articles are ultimate, and there has to be a restriction of time on the duration it may take to check the whole list. Following a minute of perusing the list, individuals may get distracted and jump the important steps.



Also, a checklist has to be easy to use. At the time of carrying out the first thing of the checklist, the surgeon and author Gawande perplexed a nanny in his group just prior to a surgical operation since it wasn’t clear the way the list needed to be used. The nanny had ticked off the stages for the operation prior to that had even begun, instead of – the plan of Gawande – reading out every stage to the surgery group and ticking them off at each stage.

In order to avoid misunderstanding, it has to be clear if the checklist has been “READ–DO” (peruse the stage, then finish that) or “DO–CONFIRM” (finish the stage, then approve you have finished it). Also, lists have to be authored in the tongue operators are known with; for instance, “fire mushrooms” (which means “bake those mushrooms currently”) in the tongue of restaurants.

When next you make a checklist, watch out to make sure it is accurate, easy to use, and contains just steps of the utmost significance.


Chapter 3 – Present’s difficult duties could not be abandoned to a single hero’s specialization; we require teams.


We usually wish for a protagonist to walk into terrifying circumstances and, utilizing an existence of experience and ability, fix the entire issues in a snap. The notion that a lone individual’s specialty is adequate to fix our issues is definitely appealing. However, it’s wrong as well.

In difficult and risky circumstances, they are groups that actually matter.

There used to be a duration of engineering that constructions were built by expert constructors who directed the entire project.  But, nowadays, the finishing of one construction project needs collaboration between white-collars who handle everything like mechanics, rodent control masonry, and waterproofing

Teams are particularly needed when handling emergencies and crucial circumstances. Following the plane crash in Hudson River in 2009, the media willingly acknowledged Sullenberger to be “Captain America” – a superhero of the incredible crash-landing where no one died. Stil Sullenberger claimed that this had been group work. As the detail on that incident opened up, it was obvious the plane wouldn’t have grounded as securely the way he did if the joint work of Sullenberger, Jeffrey Skiles the first officer, and the remainder of his group altogether.



In medical science, as well, patients going through an operation need more than only a surgeon. Anesthetists, surgeons, and nurses need to effort jointly and make use of their unique specialties as a group to do a procedure successfully

At the times we are confronted with stress or difficulty, we need to admit that this is usually the activities and expertise of a lot of people, in contrast to an individual, that makes a difficult procedure successful.


Chapter 4 – Group transmission has been important in complex circumstances and could be extremely improved with a checklist.


Think of an aviation group grounding an airship. Now imagine how terrible it might be for that complex, intense circumstance when they would not speak with one another: the pilot might not have recognized whether it could be safe to ground, the assistant captain could not have known the time or whether they needed to have the examination, and aviation employees wouldn’t have known when to do security controls.

Groups functioning on complicated works require unified transmission. For the previous case, the aviation employee could own a list to abide by; however, except they transmit brightly, that list has been pointless.

Transmission could be improved by involving stages within a list that have been intended at enhancing the flux of data. For instance, a civil engineer around Boston named Joe Salvia makes use of “submittal” checklists describing when teams in charge of structure should upgrade, control, and work as a group prior to moving on.



A team “huddle” in the following list stage that may increase transmission – a chance at the beginning of a process for members of a team to acquaint each other and talk about any possible problems. Various studies have revealed that individuals who are not familiar with one another’s names don’t work in the same place in addition to those who know each other’s names. Due to that, a crowd was added as a compulsory stage in the writer’s SSSL procedure checklist. That further transmissive method of teamwork was associated with a decrease in complexities in medicine.

Transmission within groups is significant in pressured situations. Groups are possible to be achieved further by abiding by process checklists at the time they own defined chances to transmit.


Chapter 5 – Medicine lists have saved a lot of people already.


It’s difficult to think that a basic checklist could have a huge influence on this earth. Still, medicine schedules working on the benefits of checklists revealed that these have refrained from errors, saved cost, and – most significantly– saved people.

A study conducted by Peter Pronovost, a crucial care expert, known as the Keystone Initiative, targeted to minimize contaminations from middle line catheters placed into patients’ veins at the critical care unit. Middle lines are really easy and usually infected (for instance, when contacted with non-sterile hands), leading to possibly fatal complexities in patients. Peter used a checklist for observing whether it might minimize contaminations. That had been an achievement; the attempt eventually saved 175 million USD and 1500 patients in 18 months.



Taking motivation from Peter and the areas of aviation and engineering, the writer, as well as the WHO, created a list to be tried in 8 medical centers across the globe, in the thing that was called the SSSL program. The medical centers were told to make use of this medical checklist, which was made up of nineteen vital items such as talking about the individual’s anticipated loss of blood and checking that they truly had the right patient. The outcomes were surprising; kills because of surgery across 8 medical centers were minimized by 47%.

Also, the author saw the force of a list directly. During a surgical control concerning the anticipated loss of blood, it was realized that additional blood was not kept to the side for that individual when they were required. Gawande didn’t think that it would be necessary for the patient; however, abiding by the checklist, more blood was prepared. While in the operation, Gawande did a coincidental tear leading to cardiac seizure in that individual. The additional blood was eventually useful and Gawande has been certain that with no list, the patient would have been killed by him.

Making a basic checklist could not be just a powerful tool; however, it may also signify the distinction between death and life.


Chapter 6 – Checklists may be useful in various environments.


A lot of us function in difficult or stressful surroundings that, such as the area of medicine, need precision and care, like in banking or the food field. But, the great news has been that, around such extreme surroundings, checklists truly realize a distinction in assisting us to work more productively.

Consider, for example, cook Adams in Boston’s Rialto Restaurant. The checklists Adams makes use of have been the thing most people would refer to as recipes. Still, checklists and recipes have one purpose: they show us what has to be completed and when. Additionally to owning her receipts on show in her kitchen facilities, the employees of the place create checklists to make sure that the special needs of every customer are met as well. 

As soon as the meals are prepared, they get the last control by the chef or Adams herself to ensure that they fulfill Adams’s criteria. The list structure allows Rialto to give exclusive meals to clients all the time, and no wonder Adams has earned prizes for her skill or that her place usually gets to the “best restaurant” records.



Financiers, as well, can make use of checklists to assist them to prevent avoidable risk due to reckless or uninformed choices. “Cook,” a capitalist whose name was hidden and manager of a capital valued billions of USD, makes use of a “Day 3 Checklist,” this assists his group and himself to choose whether or not to fund a corporation. The checklist provides Cook a big edge: effectiveness. This attentive and fast approach for measuring investments offers him an advantage over other capitalists.

From making sure of first-class meal occasions to assisting in earning huge money, an ordinary list has been a useful instrument that may produce remarkable outcomes and be used in various different circumstances.


The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande Book Review


Further, an agenda for the incompetent, a checklist may be a very useful instrument for specialists and professionals. Making use of a skillfully constructed checklist in difficult circumstances guarantees we see possible fatal mistakes and dangerous errors.


Are you still having mistakes in your duties, in spite of your specialty and experience? Make use of a checklist!

One may become stubborn when he/she talks about creating checklists for oneself, particularly when he/she knows precisely the thing he/she is conducting. But, it is usually the experienced professions that gain from having a checklist. A cause for that has been that we usually skip or cannot remember the noticeable “dumb stuff,” incorrectly assuming that concentrating on more complicated things has been much more significant. But, this stuff is usually significant to the process in front. Making use of a checklist assists you evade allowing the essential thing to slide from your hands, and you might just see that you realize much fewer mistakes afterward.

Require assistance with group work at the office? Use a checklist to “assemble.”

While starting a group work, ensuring that the entire group understands the names and duties of every individual within the work would assist the transmission and flux of data very simply. Have time while beginning every work or process for a group huddle: make everybody acquainted with each other and their duty, and get the crucial individuals to tell their prospects and potential difficulties that could be met in the path.


Buy this book from Amazon



Download Pdf


https://goodbooksummary.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/The+Checklist+Manifesto+by+Atul+Gawande+Book+Summary.pdf


Download Epub


https://goodbooksummary.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/The+Checklist+Manifesto+by+Atul+Gawande+Book+Summary.epub


Audiobook


Savaş Ateş

I'm a software engineer. I like reading books and writing summaries. I like to play soccer too :) Good Reads Profile: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/106467014-sava-ate

Recent Posts