Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Safety First!

Surgical teams in three quarters of Oregon hospitals have started using a simple tool to make operations safer, and it’s cut down on mistakes by 30%! This new tool is a short checklist developed by the World Health Organization (though we have our own version in Oregon), and it gives nurses, technicians, and doctors a methodical way to make sure they have all their ducks in a row. Do we all know each other by name? Check! Do we have the right patient and do we know what operation we’re performing? Check! Does this person have any allergies? Check! Have we removed all the sponges, surgical towels, needles, and instruments we used in this person’s body? Check!

Are you fascinated to learn more about how this works? I’ve got the book for you: The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande (a surgeon and professor at Harvard Medical School who also writes for The New Yorker). Gawande examines checklists in construction, investing, aviation and other fields, but he focuses on checklists in his own profession, medicine. Here’s what I found most fascinating: research has shown that surgeons are so rock star-like that it’s hard for other members of a surgical team to interrupt if they notice something’s amiss. It’s too intimidating! But, when people are polite and friendly, it makes that interruption feel collegial instead of confrontational – that is, if everyone has to say “Hi everyone, I’m Dr. So-and-so and I’m the anesthesiologist” (or whatever), they’re more likely to speak up when something’s wrong.

Safety checklists were first developed in aviation, and even those of us who have never once fantasized about being behind the controls of a jet airplane have seen this in action. Before takeoff in every commercial flight, flight attendants (whose main job is promoting safety, although they will also get you a ginger ale if you ask nicely) take their passengers through a miniature safety training. If that doesn’t do it, you can always review the information in the safety card in your seat pocket. Eric Ericson and Johan Pihl’s Design for Impact explains the history of airline safety cards, and reproduces hundreds of elegant, amusing, and instructive examples from the last fifty years of safer flying.

Everyone knows that scientists have to follow careful safety protocols – Professor Max Axiom, Super Scientist teaches kids the basics of science experiment safety measures in Lessons in Science Safety. This helpful comic from Donald B. Lemke, Thomas K. Adamson, Tod Smith and Bill Anderson gets readers ready to learn basic lab science safely with sections on preparing for the lab, working safely, handling accidents, and cleaning up. Entertaining and instructional!