More on checklists and communication

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I posted a while ago about checklists in KM, and how these have been used in hospitals to make remarkable improvements in patient safety statistics.

And  again more recently I blogged about how better communication saves lives in the intensive care unit.

Since then, I have found an example of the medical checklists which are used in surgery. It's interesting to see how much of the checklist deals with communication. 10 of the 14 checkboxes in the blue and green checklists  are about communicating and reviewing as a team. Sometimes the simplest KM tools are the best - a simple checkist, driving communicating about the important items, just to make sure that nothing is missed and no corners are cut, is enough to cut deaths by more than 40% and complications by more than a third.

Watch the checklist in action below