Organizations which use checklists to ensure proper and timely administering of antibiotics, and confirm a patient's condition and operation, at various stages of the patient surgical process including before the administering of anesthesia can reduce mortality rates significantly, according to a report from HealthImaging.com covering a presentation by Atul Gawande, MD, a general and endocrine surgeon at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, at the Radiological Society of North America annual meeting.
Such checklists should also be used before an incision and before a patient presents for surgery, with studies showing that checklists can reduce death rates by 45 percent.
Dr. Gawande, who is also a writer for the New Yorker and a professor at Boston's Harvard Medical School, said less than 20 percent of hospitals use a checklist system, according to the report.
Read the HealthImaging.com report about the presentation of Dr. Atul Gawande.
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