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Think you have a busy day? Try working as a trauma specialist in one of the busiest hospitals in the world. Here’s what you can learn from someone who was there.
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Think you have a busy day? Try working as a trauma specialist in one of the busiest hospitals in the world. That’s where Peter Pronovost found himself in 2001 at Johns Hopkins.
A new patient would come in, and it would take the herculean effort of dozens of professionals around the clock to save, stabilize, and nurse them back to health. Studies have shown the average trauma patient needs 178 individual actions performed for them each day. These are critical, life-saving actions, but each of them also carries a risk: if even one is performed wrong, it could kill someone.
So, Peter thought up a truly novel concept that would go on to revolutionize the world of medicine and patient care by making their work faster and more accurate, saving millions of lives.
The groundbreaking technology? A checklist. That’s right, a lousy old checklist.
Despite it’s widespread use the world over, it had never caught on with surgeons, doctors, nurses, and others involved in the business of saving lives under difficult and stressful circumstances. File that under “humans are crazy.”
If a checklist can save a life on the brink, it can probably do wonders for you, too. Or, at least, your daily to do list.
Since learning about the power of the checklist, I’ve started implementing it in my life. In fact, I’m following one as I write this very article, using my favorite to do app, Trello.
If you want to work faster and make fewer mistakes, you’ll want to develop your own.
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How A Checklist Helps You Work Faster And Smarter
Here are some of the top objections to using a checklist for everyday tasks:
- I’m too busy to be constantly referring to a list.
- What I do changes too much to follow a list.
- I can already remember everything I need to do.
Here’s the funny thing about these objections: the more of them you identify with, the more important it is you have a checklist. This is especially true if you think you can remember everything. Plenty of research has shown when you’re under stress, you’re far more likely to forget things you know and make mistakes you otherwise wouldn’t.
But a checklist can actually lower your stress by reinforcing information you know and raising your confidence in the work you do.
When you’re working on something difficult and the clock is running down, your brain has to go into overdrive trying to remember every detail you need to cover. With a checklist in place, you can offload all the work necessary to remember these things, freeing up more space to just do them. No more decision fatigue.
Even more, a checklist builds the habit of reliability by preventing missed steps. When you use it, you can feel certain you’re not forgetting anything. Over time, this raises your confidence which can lead to doing higher quality and more creative work.
But how do you create a great checklist?
A Checklist For Creating Great Checklists
Now you’re totally pumped (yeah, checklists!), and ready create one. But how do you do it in a way that’ll lead to great results: faster, better work with fewer mistakes?
We can look at the lifesaving work of Peter Pronovost again for clues. Think of this as a checklist for creating great checklists.
- Start with the goal in mind. A checklist isn’t any good if it’s not absolutely clear what its purpose is. This should be specific: “Do [x] faster.” Or, “complete [y] more accurately.” In Pronovost’s case, the goal was to be impeccably accurate. So, his checklist focused on listing every action needed in exactly the right order with enough detail to describe how to perform them perfectly. Whatever your goal is, adjust for that.
- Focus on improving small, repetitive tasks. Life in the ICU is crazy, and every patient’s care is different. Rather than try create a checklist for something so nebulous, Pronovost focused on one thing: a checklist to reduce line infections (the tubes that go in and out of a patient’s body). That’s a tiny part of their overall care, but it’s standard and repeatable. Improving that process alone has saved countless lives. Look for parts of your own work that are small and repetitive to improve.
- Put the steps in the right order. For a sick patient, it’s critical every step of their care is not just performed correctly, but in the right order. One mistake could cost a life. So Pronovost focused on making sure each step was listed at the exact right point in his checklist. Your checklist will not be as useful if your brain has to scour your to do list for what to do next.
- Make adjustments early and often. Unless you’re some sort of genius rocket doctor (even then…), your checklist won’t come out perfect on the first try. A great list is built over time with adjustments from actually using it in the field. Make time to edit your checklist. Add steps you initially forgot. Drop steps that turn out to be unnecessary. Re-order them to make yourself faster or more accurate.
A checklist is hardly a revolutionary concept, but Peter Pronovost used one to make small improvements to our healthcare system that has saved millions of lives.
No one’s life hangs in the balance of your checklist (I hope). But your sanity, schedule, and reputation might. Start building yours today, and you’ll be well on the way to working smarter and faster every day.
Additional sources:
The Checklist
A look into the nature and causes of human errors in the intensive care unit [pdf]
Originally published on riskology.co
Photo: militaryhealth / flickr
The post Want to Work Faster With Fewer Mistakes? Try Using a Trauma Checklist appeared first on The Good Men Project.