The Checklist Manifesto

I absolutely loved the simplicity and clarity of this approach.

It’s almost the opposite end of the spectrum to my first selection and a method that I found more and more common over the years of my career: checklists and flowcharts for the serious and frequent presentations in the Emergency Department, in the operating theatre, and at Triage. And Gawande was right: they did and do save lives.

More generally, I used this process all the time when I was training other staff in my posts with Doctors Without Borders. Preventing and avoiding problems with fail-safe systems is so much… show more.

Gawande’s introspective analysis of complex tasks – including modern surgery – is as much a practical handbook as it is a pleasure to read.

The author starts us off in the operating room, making it familiar enough for us to understand how easily mistakes can occur in its controlled chaos. Then, he brings us into airplane cockpits and construction sites to hammer home a simple theme: checklists are a potent antidote to human fallibility.

Although not a ’scientist’ in the classical sense, Gawande puts the lessons he extracts to the test at his own institution, showing how the routine use… show more.

To me, it’s not enough for someone to academically understand a concept—I need them to have shown that they know how to use it in practice.

Atul Gawande is a world-class surgeon who also happens to also be a writer. He understands the concepts and describes first-hand stories about how he’s used them in the field.

This is a short book that is entertaining to read and will impact how you work.