Beyond the Checklist: Making Medicine Safer

The U.S. healthcare system is now spending many millions of dollars to improve "patient safety" and "inter-professional practice." Yet every year an estimated 100,000 patients are still affected by preventable medical errors or infections. Suzanne Gordon and Patrick Mendenhall look at how health care providers can reduce medical errors and injuries. In Beyond the Checklist: What Else Health Care Can Learn from Aviation Teamwork and Safety, they show that lives could be saved and patient care enhanced if hospitals adapted relevant lessons of aviation safety and teamwork.