Hello,
Last week I dove right into things with my
post on diabetes care and management. I wanted to take one step back and look
at the overarching idea here. I care a lot about healthcare and I think it is
incredibly important that we as a community focus on managing a healthy
community as well as promoting healthy behaviors. Science and medicine is for
ever changing and it is near impossible to be on top of any change in
healthcare before we face a problem. However, I think laying down some
groundwork and developing goals to lead towards a healthy environment is
essential. A perfect world in health and medicine is never going to happen but
we can create a vision of what we want to work towards. Thus why I named my
blog 20/20 Health Vision.
Pointing out basic ideas like organizing
healthy meals to eat, managing stress and exercise, and making simple
checklists may seem redundant and pointless but they have proven to be just the
opposite. Doctor Atul Gawande is a practicing surgeon and has done a great amount
of research on health care in the US. As many people in the healthcare field
are aware, the US spends thousands of dollars more than any other country, yet
we rank 30-something in life expectancy. How is that we can be spending so much
money on healthcare and not be ranked at least top 5? There are a number of
theories on why we spend too much money on healthcare. I have looked into and
agree with many because I am concerned that we don't take these precautionary
measures to look at why we spend so much money on healthcare and perform so
poorly. Atul Gawande was approached by the World Health Organization for his
work and implemented the WHO surgical safety checklist. After implementing this
checklist in 9 hospitals he found that the patient death rate fell by 40% and
patient complications fell by 33%. This is incredible that such a simple
concept, a checklist, has proven to bring so much more success in the health
field by eliminating error and excess medicine. The checklist has helped
improve life as well as minimize our spending and will hopefully
continue to do so.
This is a prime example of why we need to pay
attention to fine details and easy concepts to improve health management and
organization which will in turn, improve medicine in our communities. These
things will help us work towards that 20/20 health vision!
Kayli Mathews
I love your blog name!
ReplyDeleteChecklists do work. I know that from four+ decades as a pilot. You either pay attention to every line on the checklist, or you risk crashing and burning. The laws of physics will win every time.
ReplyDeleteIn medicine, however, there is a certain personality arrogance found in some physicians and other clinicians. "We don't need no stinkin' checklist. No one tells me what to do." I've worked in the OR for 25 years and saw it every day, although the newer graduates seem more open-minded about checklists, and don't take it as an affront. Hospitals need to allow the time for full implementation of checklists during OR room turnover, because it will somewhat slow it down. And in the OR, time is money. An empty OR is not generating any revenue. I've moonlighted at for-profit hospitals where they were aiming for a 10 minute OR turnover and I saw many housekeeping corners cut and where no checklists were used. Senior hospital leadership needs to enforce the use of checklists, accepting how this might impact OR turnover.
Hi Kayli,
ReplyDeleteChecklists are huge in healthcare, and there are so many evolving opportunities to create them. While we do already use many checklists, it is important to review common responsibilities or protocols to see if there is an opportunity to create a new checklist. I make checklists for myself all the time to ensure steps aren't missed for various responsibilities.
As you move forward with your career, you will find that healthcare and the airline industry are often compared to one another as there are a lot of similarities. Not only are checklists important in both industries, but the underlying reason they are important is huge- ensuring safety, for 100% of people, for 100% of the time. Just like airlines must ensure consistent accuracy and safety, so must healthcare.