The average patient in an intensive care unit (ICU) requires 178 actions by medical staff each day. Each action poses major risks.
About 50% of ICU patients experience serious complications. When that happens, the chances of survival drop significantly.
In 2001, Peter Pronovost, a critical-care specialist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, had an idea to reduce infections that can occur when doctors insert lines into ICU patients.
Pronovost wanted to create a simple checklist with five steps for doctors:
- Wash your hands with soap.
- Clean the patient’s skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic.
- Cover the entire patient with sterile drapes.
- Wear a sterile hat, mask, gown, and gloves.
- Apply sterile dressing over the catheter site once the line is in place.
Since these five steps are widely known and taught, some people thought it was unnecessary to make a checklist for them. However, Pronovost persisted.
He asked nurses in his ICU to observe doctors as they inserted lines into patients. Nurses were also asked to record how often the doctors completed all five steps.
After thirty days, they found that doctors skipped at least one step over 33% of the time.
With this data in hand, Pronovost and his team convinced the hospital’s leadership to authorize nurses to stop doctors when they were about to skip one of the five steps.
With this new rule in place, the ten-day line infection rate dropped from 11% to 0% over the next year.
Pronovost and his team then followed doctors and patients for another fifteen months. Over this entire period, their simple checklist prevented eight deaths and over 40 infections. It also saved more than $2 million in costs.
Encouraged by these results, Pronovost made more checklists. Nurses and doctors also created some of their own.
These efforts cut the average time a patient spent in the ICU in half. The chances of a patient experiencing untreated pain dropped from 41% to 3%. Most importantly, twenty-one fewer patients died than in the year before.
You need not work in an ICU to benefit from using checklists. They are extremely valuable for any ambitious professional.
Here are four benefits of using checklists at work:
1. Reduce errors and omissions.
Even experts can make mistakes when performing basic tasks. Checklists eliminate human error.
2. Ensure more consistent, higher-quality work.
Checklists help you and others put your best foot forward every time.
3. Save time and energy.
Trying to store too much in your memory is a recipe for wasting time and feeling overwhelmed. Checklists free up time and mental energy.
4. Make it easier to delegate and outsource.
Checklists allow you to clone yourself, without sacrificing quality. Being able to hand off tasks to other people frees up more of your time.
Start a checklist for any task that you repeat. If your checklist is for a series of steps, be sure to put them in the right order.
You might already use many checklists at work.
Even so, what is one new checklist that you could develop to do your job more efficiently and effectively?
References
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About the Author
Pete Leibman is a speaker and author who helps consultants, lawyers, and advisors build the energy, focus, and resilience to sustain high performance. He delivers keynotes, workshops, and webinars for leading consulting firms, law firms, and financial services firms. Pete is the author of three books and more than 300 articles on high performance. His latest book is Stronger Advisor: High-Performance Habits for Consultants, Lawyers, and Advisors.
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