The Checklist Manifesto
One big difference, I've always suspected, is that a plane crash is very visible and affects hundreds of people at once. Somebody sick dying in hospital, on the other hand, is just something that happens, and draws very little attention - even though way more people are affected than in plane crashes. So, the clustering and visibility of plane crashes leads to excellent check list discipline and other best practices in aviation, by and large (CRM, Crew Resource Management, is another thing Atul Gawande brings up in The Checklist Manifesto, and also eminently transferable to surgery), while…
>A book that does this terribly is the "The Checklist Manifesto." ~250 pages of filler when the original article was 20 pages I read this book earlier this year and quite enjoyed it. The main idea could undoubtedly be written in even less than the 20 pages (referring to the original article). What made this book super interesting were all the deep-dives into how complexity is managed in aviation (his visit to Seattle/SEATAC airport), construction (the myriad complexities in managing construction of a high rise), and the author's main field (healthcare). I found the various stories…
Somewhat related but I find many nonfiction books could easily be condensed down an immense amount (talking 20 to 50% here). I don't know if it's me getting older or simply not wanting to put up with filler content anymore. A book that does this terribly is the "The Checklist Manifesto." ~250 pages of filler when the original article was 20 pages, the exact same information but distilled down to its essence: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist I haven't read Atomic Habits, but I did get the audio book but after reading this summary (which is very good, and much…
Atul Gawande’s „Checklist Manifesto” is also fantastic. He goes specifically into how airline and construction safety checklists make those industries safer and then lays out a checklist method for reducing complications in the OR. There is some discussion on implementing black box style recording into the OR. I’ve met surgeons enthusiastic for this idea as an opportunity to geek out even more. But this enthusiasm depends on how authoritarian culture is in a given country. The OR is also often a place where people are in a corrupted power structure. I have been to countries where dangerous…
There's a field known as "Instructional Technology" or "Learning Technology" that studies how to optimize instruction, training, and educational experiences. The difference that the author articulates is the difference between two major schools of thought in this field: Behaviorism and Constructivism. The hand-holding, specifications approach taken by American College Board is an example of Behaviorism. While Project Euler's structured, incremental challenges are examples of Constructivism. Within IT, there are certainly adamant followers of both schools of thought. But, as with many…
I will definitely second Atul Gawande's Checklist Manifesto. Eliyahu Goldratt's books (I have read Critical Chain and It's Not Luck as well as The Goal) are not as original as often claimed. They are very readable introductions, but a good project management text will cover most of what they do and more. The project management book that I have found most helpful is Project Management With Cpm, Pert and Precedence Diagramming; despite its age (1983) it covers a wider variety of techniques with more detail and less extraneous crud than any of the others I have seen (note I am still…
The list that the OP read: - Checklist Manifesto - Made to Stick - Confessions of a Public Speaker - Why Everyone Else Is a Hypocrite - The Power of Habit I think the fact that he's questioning the value of reading such books is fair (and I find it ironic that he's applying such rigor to try and extract value from such books), but these are hardly the books of great literature. Self-improvement and self-motivation books are, perhaps too often, profit-guided and banal. You don't read, say, Steinbeck or Vonnegut, to 'remember what's in them.' (Furthermore, things like 'active recall'…
Dr. Atul Gawande† reported 20 years ago how obstetricians standardized on c-sections because the suppposedly-better alternative, forceps, (i) was very difficult to teach and supervise, and (ii) used incorrectly, could result in horrible injuries to both baby and mother: The question facing obstetrics was this: Is medicine a craft or an industry? If medicine is a craft, then you focus on teaching obstetricians to acquire a set of artisanal skills—the Woods corkscrew maneuver for the baby with a shoulder stuck, the Lovset maneuver for the breech baby, the feel of a forceps for a baby whose…
Atul Gawande's checklist manifesto emphasizes the need for processes while solving complex problems like surgery. A doctor can forget to wash his hand while a machine cannot forget. So that is a place where computer assisted techniques make sense just like the case of flying a plane where the autopilot can take care of most things except when things go wrong and humans have to take over. I don't think anyone with adequate experience in healthcare and technology would make wild claims about replacing doctors with machines. There are plenty of places where machines can aid doctors and simplify…
I also didn't think this. I've read the book but not the article, and while the conclusion seems fine, a lot of the material in the book is stretched. The one that bothered me the most was the inclusion of the India soap program as support for checklists -- those are entirely different models. The soap model involved researchers handing out free soap, and teaching people that they should wash with the soap in any of a set of specific circumstances: - once a day (full body) - before preparing food (hands) - before eating (hands) - before distributing food to anyone (hands)…