Checklists

When we operate, we are required to go through a checklist in order to make sure that everybody agrees about the surgery, specifically about things like identifying the patient and identifying which eye to treat. This is pretty important in order to make sure that the correct eye gets operated on, because wrong eye surgery should be a “never event,” one that happens 0 out of a million times. Recently, I’ve tried to implement checklists in the clinic as well, as a way to make sure that we are all doing our uniform best for every patient every time. I actually find the checklists to be pretty freeing because I spend a lot less time rehashing what’s been done in order to make sure everything is done correctly; the checklist ensures that! I want to share that information here to emphasize how much we care about doing the best job we can every single patient we see, and I also think it is a useful concept to share. No matter what your job, if you do something repetitively, maybe a checklist will enhance your experience too! Give it a try and see what happens.