Ebook The Checklist Manifesto How to Get Things Right Atul Gawande 9780312430009 Books

Product details Paperback 240 pages Publisher Picador; First edition (January 4, 2011) Language English ISBN-10 9780312430009 ISBN-13 978-0312430009 ASIN 0312430000

The Checklist Manifesto How to Get Things Right Atul Gawande 9780312430009 Books Reviews

• Meh. The book is WAY over-hyped!! It spends MOST of its long never-ending pages explaining medical scenarios. It's unbelievable....I felt as if I was studying my Paramedic book again! All that nonsense to get to "Checklists are good...you should develop one for everything you do". That's it folks...I just gave you the cliff Notes for the ENTIRE book! Even the sample checklists (all two of them) they illustrate are a joke.
  
  Pay ME whatever this book costs, and I'll actually MAKE a checklist for you! Tell ya what...contact me if you want the book. I'll give it to you if you just pay shipping. Very disappointing!
• Despite our vast knowledge in virtually every area of life, Gawande believes we are still deeply prone to failure. He believes many such failures could be overcome (and, conversely, much success obtained) through a simple but often ignored tool, the checklist. He writes
  
  That means we need a different strategy for overcoming failure, one that builds on experience and takes advantage of the inevitable human inadequacies. And there is such a strategy though it will seem almost ridiculous in its simplicity, maybe even crazy to those of us who have spent years carefully developing ever more advanced skills and technologies. It is a checklist (p. 13).
  
  Gawande supports his conviction through the use of interesting, true accounts drawn from several areas medicine (chapters 1, 2, 5, 7 and 8), aviation (chapter 6 and pp. 32-34, 173-182), construction (chapter 3), national disasters (chapter 4), factories (chapter 6), and investments (chapter 8).
  
  The author believes that we normally do not look for patterns in our failures but we should, and the simple checklist could serve as our guide (p. 185). I, personally, have always made use of checklists, finding them a valuable means to keep me on task and remind me of what needs to be done. But The Checklist Manifesto has challenged me to step up my game, especially in my supervision of others and in accomplishing long term and/or complex goals. I think most everyone would benefit from reading this well-written, interesting, and helpful book.
  
  Reviewed by Gary E. Gilley, Pastor-teacher, Southern View Chapel
• Loaded with anecdotes with little scientific backing. Not much to get out of this book other than "checklists can be useful for some situations." If the author ever chooses to write an update, I hope he adds some how-to info and includes such items as criteria for making a good checklist, best practices for checklist structuring and development, etc.
• I had to read this book for work, and I wasn't looking forward to it. To my surprise it has a very good narrative is quite readable. The examples used are compelling and keep the pages turning. By the end it had me thinking of our processes and I have my team scouring them looking for places where a checklist would be appropriate. If you're concerned about quality, you should give this book a try.
• I bought this for my niece who is a nurse, after my brother's hospital experience was unsatisfactory. Knowledge, history, and status weren't shared by the staff and there was no mechanism for tracking details, like the fact that he was diabetic though recovering from a surgery (related to the diabetes). There were bad estimates of his pain level from the staff not knowing he had had two strokes. And he got a terrible bed sore. My niece works in a different hospital where she described her reputation for documenting everything meticulously. I thought I would give her some further support for this practice. Gawande is the go-to guy for all things medical, and especially for wisdom related to medical and hospital practice. He has data, narratives, and is authoritative. Many errors and hospital acquired complications can be avoided with checklists that keep everyone on all shift on the same page. They are more detailed than normal white board status reports. I noted that a hospital near me, when I went for a diagnostic test, seemed to use the practice. Every new person who entered the room asked my name and what I was there for. While repetitive, it eliminates the possibility of the wrong procedure happening to someone. I also recommend Jerome Groopman for other medical practice wisdom.
• I suppose you could order the abbreviated summary version of the book to get the main idea and you might already suspect that the main idea is that checklists are the way to get things right. I must say, however, that the main idea is just the destination and understanding how Atul arrived at this simple and perhaps obvious result is just as important in driving the point home. I am only three chapters in and the point has been made but the supporting evidence around how and why checklists are the way has been profoundly moving.
• Very interesting exploration of the benefits of using checklists in various industries (but mainly in operating theaters in hospital) to facilitate consistency which leads to improvements in many areas productivity, safety, profitability to name but a few. The author is a highly experienced surgeon who saw the advantages of introducing checklists to radically improve patient safety during operations and in recovery. What I found shocking from reading this book was the sheer number of mistakes that are routinely made in operating theaters around the world which lead to poor recovery rates and even death in some cases. The benefit of introducing checklists into theater was enforcement of policy that all staff during an op were now "singing off the same hymn sheet". The book alludes to this idea repeatedly.
  
  The book was very readable my only gripe was I'd have liked to have seen an example of the checklists that the author referred to.