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Pilot program aims to reduce medical errors
Interview with Dr. Gawande on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart at bottom of story.
South Carolina has been chosen for a pilot program to bring surgical "checklists" into every operating room.
For patients, this means careful attention will be paid by every member of the surgical team by the simple task of going through a checklist before, during and after an operation.
The South Carolina Hospital Association announced this partnership Wednesday with Dr. Atul Gawande, a Boston-based surgeon and author.
Gawande, who also writes regularly in the New Yorker, helped introduce surgical safety checklists for the World Health Organization. His book, "The Checklist Manifesto," was a New York Times best seller.
The book outlines how simple checklists can help professionals navigate complicated tasks. Checklists have been used in construction and in the airline industry.
"We selected South Carolina to be the first state to partner with us to help improve surgical safety around the entire country," said Gawande in a news release by the hospital association.
"South Carolina has a tremendous history of successfully introducing other quality initiatives such as improving the care of heart attack patients and reducing infection. South Carolina hospitals have already demonstrated their commitment to improving surgical safety by initially testing the World Health Organization's Surgical Safety Checklist in more than 80 percent of the state's hospitals, many of which have since adopted the Checklist as a routine component of surgical care. We would like to collaborate with South Carolina hospitals in developing a model to improve surgical safety at a state level that other U.S. states can follow."
Studies so far have shown that the checklist could reduce major complications in surgery by as much as 30 percent. The hospital association said, with more than 700,000 surgeries performed in the state annually, a reduction in complications could prevent hundreds of patients from dying.
The goal is ambitious: to introduce the checklist in every hospital and have it used for every surgical patient, then bring that model to other states.
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| Atul Gawande | ||||
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