The modern world has given us stupendous know-how. Yet avoidable failures continue to plague us
in health care government the law the financial industry - in almost every realm of
organized activity. And the reason is simple: the volume and complexity of knowledge today has
exceeded our ability as individuals to properly deliver it to people - consistently correctly
safely. We train longer specialize more use ever advancing technologies and still we fail.
Atul Gawande makes a compelling argument that we can do better using the simplest of methods:
the lowly checklist. He explains how checklists have made possible some of the most difficult
things people do - from flying airplanes to building skyscrapers. He takes us from Austria
where an emergency checklist saved a patient who had spent half an hour underwater to Michigan
where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly
hospital infection and to the flight deck of a crashing plane. Along the way he reveals what
checklists can do what they cant and how they could bring about striking improvements in
fields well beyond medicine from disaster recovery to investment banking to professions and
businesses of all kinds.
