Physicians Using Smartphones Can Help Decrease Deaths
Atul Gawande never thought he would write a book about checklists. But it turns out, checklists save lives. Gawande, a surgeon at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a staff writer for The New Yorker was at Harvard University on Wednesday to discuss his new book “The Checklist Manifesto.” Like Baer, Gawande uses stories to transmit important information on health policy. While an undergraduate at Stanford University, Gawande took a creative writing course because a girl he liked (Kathleen Hobson, now his wife) was taking it. He got a C because he had “nothing to say.” It wasn’t until he began his surgical training that Gawande had something he wanted to write about. He ended up writing two successful books on surgery: “Complications” and “Better.” He is now “Dr. Checklist,” because while working for the World Health Organization (WHO), Gawande demonstrated that checklists reduce surgical complications and death by double-digit percentage points in hospitals around ...