There is a great article in today’s New York Times titled "Simple Checklist Makes Surgery Safer."
An excerpt: "a year after surgical teams at eight hospitals adopted a 19-item checklist, the average patient death rate fell more than 40 percent and the rate of complications fell by about a third, the researchers reported.’
The Times article is based on an article in the January 14, 2009 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, which reports on a research project conducted by the World Health Organization.
Here is the "Elements of Surgical Safety Checklist."
This article is a keeper.