Harvard School of Public Health

primary aim is to target the three biggest cause of mortality in surgery - preventable infections, preventable complication from bleeding, and safety in anesthesia.
It includes six basic steps in care, including verifying that it is the correct patient, ensuring equipment is not left inside the patient, and administering an antibiotic before making an incision - which cuts the risk of infection by half.
Preliminary results from patients at eight pilot sites - including London, Seattle and Toronto - indicate that the checklist has nearly doubled the likelihood that patients will receive proven standards of surgical care, leading to a significant cut in complications and deaths.
The study, published in the Lancet, found that before the checklist was used there was a 64% chance that at least one of the procedures was forgotten - with no difference between rich and developing countries.
There have been major improvements in surgical operations in recent years.
But Professor Atul Gawande, of Harvard, said: "The quality and safety of surgical care has been dismayingly variable in every part of the world.
"What we identified was that the idea of a checklist to make sure the basic steps are taken, could make a big difference not only in the poorest part of the world but even in the rich ones."