- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Profile Books (28 Jan 2010)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1846683130
- ISBN-13: 978-1846683138
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
12,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6 in Books > History > Other Historical Subjects > History of Medicine
- #51 in Books > Science & Nature > History & Philosophy
- #56 in Books > Health, Family & Lifestyle > Health Issues > Popular Medicine
The Checklist Manifesto
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Amazon Exclusive: Malcolm Gladwell Reviews The Checklist Manifesto
Malcolm Gladwell was named one of TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2005. He is most recently the author of What the Dog Saw (a collection of his writing from The New Yorker) as well as the bestsellers Outliers, The Tipping Point, and Blink. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of The Checklist Manifesto:
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Malcolm Gladwell was named one of TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2005. He is most recently the author of What the Dog Saw (a collection of his writing from The New Yorker) as well as the bestsellers Outliers, The Tipping Point, and Blink. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of The Checklist Manifesto:
Over the past decade, through his writing in The New Yorker magazine and his books Complications and Better, Atul Gawande has made a name for himself as a writer of exquisitely crafted meditations on the problems and challenges of modern medicine. His latest book, The Checklist Manifesto, begins on familiar ground, with his experiences as a surgeon. But before long it becomes clear that he is really interested in a problem that afflicts virtually every aspect of the modern world--and that is how professionals deal with the increasing complexity of their responsibilities. It has been years since I read a book so powerful and so thought-provoking.
Gawande begins by making a distinction between errors of ignorance (mistakes we make because we don't know enough), and errors of ineptitude (mistakes we made because we don’t make proper use of what we know). Failure in the modern world, he writes, is really about the second of these errors, and he walks us through a series of examples from medicine showing how the routine tasks of surgeons have now become so incredibly complicated that mistakes of one kind or another are virtually inevitable: it's just too easy for an otherwise competent doctor to miss a step, or forget to ask a key question or, in the stress and pressure of the moment, to fail to plan properly for every eventuality. Gawande then visits with pilots and the people who build skyscrapers and comes back with a solution. Experts need checklists--literally--written guides that walk them through the key steps in any complex procedure. In the last section of the book, Gawande shows how his research team has taken this idea, developed a safe surgery checklist, and applied it around the world, with staggering success.
The danger, in a review as short as this, is that it makes Gawande’s book seem narrow in focus or prosaic in its conclusions. It is neither. Gawande is a gorgeous writer and storyteller, and the aims of this book are ambitious. Gawande thinks that the modern world requires us to revisit what we mean by expertise: that experts need help, and that progress depends on experts having the humility to concede that they need help. --Malcolm Gladwell
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
`A welcome book... packed with vivid writing, heart-stopping anecdotes and statistical surprises' --Financial Times
'[a] riveting and thought-provoking book' --David Aaranovitch, The Times
'A fascinating read' --Catholic Herald
`He argues eloquently and persuasively for the humble checklist.' --British Medical Journal
`Important as well as absorbing' --Steven Poole, Guardian
`A fascinating insight into the power of the humble to do list' --Psychologies
'[a] riveting and thought-provoking book' --David Aaranovitch, The Times
'A fascinating read' --Catholic Herald
`He argues eloquently and persuasively for the humble checklist.' --British Medical Journal
`Important as well as absorbing' --Steven Poole, Guardian
`A fascinating insight into the power of the humble to do list' --Psychologies
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
45 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A defence of rational, systems-thinking approach to handling complex problems,
By
This review is from: The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right (Hardcover)
Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right has come close on the heels of Umberto Eco's The Infinity of Lists. Both are about lists and both admit to the ability of lists to bring about order and control. Both books attracted me because I am a consummate checklist-maker. Despite my prejudicial preference for lists and reading about lists, it is a credit to the quality of Atul Gawande's writing that the book kept me absorbed for the 3 hours it took to read all 193 pages of it.
The author proposes "checklists" as a functional tool to deal with the limitations of human knowledge and the possibility of making mistakes in the face of complex problems. Using stories from construction management, airline piloting and disaster management, and surgery, he shows how checklists can be used to break down complex tasks into simpler steps, thus helping prevent expensive mistakes. The author delves further into two kinds of lists (Do-Confirm or Read-Do) using a story from how the airline manufacturing industry writes their "user manuals". Early on, he points out that checklists are not some silver bullet, and that there is judgement involved. Some situations may benefit from checklists, while others may not need any. Later in the book, he also admits that to many, lists are protocols and embody rigidity. He then proceeds to illustrate why this needn't be so and to demonstrate the importance of team work and how checklists enable that discipline, especially in disasters. I found Chapters 7 and 8 most fascinating. The stories told so far describe the complexity of the work/ task itself but these two chapters introduce another layer, that of institutional complexity. Chapter 7 details the WHO sponsored study to examine if checklists made any difference to safety, infections, post-surgery deaths in 8 quite disparate hospitals around the world. The results, from using the checklist, regarding reduction in technical problems, complications, infections and deaths were encouraging, for all cultural settings and even allowing for the Hawthorne Effect. In Chapter 8, much mainstream media coverage of Jan 2009's "Miracle on the Hudson River" is debunked while the author tells the story of the pilots Sullenberger and Stiles and their calm use of appropriate procedures, while their cabin crew prepared passengers for and then monitored safe evacuation, to strengthen his thesis. The other half of Chapter 8 particularly resonated with me because I work with investors and entrepreneurs. I was fascinated by the stories of the 3 investors who have incorporated checklists into their investment decisions, favouring dispassionate analysis over irrational exuberance, so to speak. The title is deceptively simple for this is a profound book, written accessibly and clearly. It is a defence of rational, systems-thinking approach to solving complex problems, to creating team work and collegiality amongst narrow specialists while ensuring desirable outcomes, no matter what the setting. Managers, entrepreneurs, investors as well as professional project managers such as event planners would do well to read, ponder and practise the idea proposed by the book.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great discussion on the use a check lists,
By
This review is from: The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right (Hardcover)
This book puts forward a very compelling case for the use of simple check lists to assist in healthcare. These check lists should not be the controlling factor but should act as an aid to helping improve the levels of care given. This is an idea which has been received quite well in the healthcare profession in the U.K. With checklists for bothe Pre and post operative procedures being part of Lord Darzi's recommendations.
I first came across this book after Atul Gawande appeared on the Daily Show with John Stewart, and the common sense arguments that he put forward for the use of checklists were very compelling. Their use in scenarios such as Pre-flight have been invaluable and saved counless lives, and not by being monotonous list that dumb down procedures but provide an aide memoir to a skilled individual which helps ensure no critical element of a procedure is overlooked.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Paradigm Shifting!,
This review is from: The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right (Hardcover)
It's true that you can learn so much about your field of expertise by taking a 'fresh eyes' approach - this book does just that. I'm not a surgeon. I would recommend this book to anyone involved with implementing change or organisational transformation. All too often in business simple solutions to known problems are dismissed as they are deemed to be 'insulting to our intelliginece' - yet this book offers a refreshing perspective. This provides a great analysis (in a simple-to-read-fashion) into the risks of relying on knowledge and expertise alone in todays knowledge-hungry world. It's difficult not to relate to the significance of this books' revelations - due to many examples coming from a field that we all have some level of experience of - hospitals - even as patients. I would especially recommend this book to anyone inlvolved in implementing 'Lean' who has an audience who is a little tired of hearing Toyota Toyota Toyota references......
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