LOOKING BACK– OPPOSITION TO SAVING LIVES BY USING CHECKLISTS.

LOOKING BACK– OPPOSITION TO SAVING LIVES BY USING CHECKLISTS. I posted here about Atul Gutwande’s argument that doctors would do a better job if they used checklists for complicated procedures. I was surprised that they didn’t already use checklists. In this article, Gutwande reports that a federal agency has shut down a program in the state of Michigan which used checklists in intensive care units to reduce hospital infections. Gutwande says the program had saved more than 1500 lives in the last 18 months. What was the reason for shutting down the program? The government notice said that, “By introducing a checklist and tracking the results without written, informed consent from each patient and health-care provider, they had violated scientific ethics regulations.”