MEMPHIS, Tenn., Jan. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Recent hoopla surrounding published research citing the patient safety benefits of surgery checklists would suggest medical experts have stumbled onto a startling new tactic to prevent medical error. In reality, research from the World Health Organization published Tuesday, January 13, 2009, in The New England Journal of Medicine is old news for many of the safest U.S. hospitals. The NEJM article describes how doctors using a simple checklist before surgery were able to reduce post-surgical deaths by more 36%.
Standout medical institutions like
Hospital executives say using checklists have more benefits than just safety. Dr. Stanley W. Marks, Senior Vice President & Chief Medical Officer for six hospitals in the Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood, FL says, "Not only have we made our hospitals much safer than they already were with our surgery checklists, our patients are more satisfied with their care and our physicians love working here because of our commitment to their patient's safety."
Other than safety, the most important benefit cited by healthcare leaders is the lower costs that come with better safety. By using checklists, administrators have discovered that staff make fewer costly mistakes, are less wasteful with medical supplies, and more efficient with their time. Says Dr. Marks, whose hospitals have used aviation-based checklists for three years, "Once we saw how our system began to run even more reliably and with fewer delays, we realized checklists were the right thing for our patients and the right thing to do for our bottom line."
About LifeWings Partners LLC:
LifeWings Partners was founded by a former U.S. Navy Top Gun instructor, a commercial airline pilot, and two physicians who are former NASA astronauts. LifeWings' practical and effective teamwork training programs are highly effective in reducing human error and currently involve the training of more than 13,000 high-performance medical team members per year. Measurable results are found in all LifeWings' initiatives. To find out more, please visit www.SaferPatients.com.
LIFEWINGS CONTACT: Steve Harden, President LifeWings Partners LLC sharden@SaferPatients.com (901) 413-8598
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