By leading efforts to spread the Surgical Safety Checklist, medical students are making an immediate impact on patient safety.

摘要

With the support and endorsement of Gawande, the American Medical Student Association and Don Berwick, former president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), and using IHI's Open School chapter network and social networking devices like Facebook, students spread the word that the checklist was a very intuitive and cost-effective intervention. Their initial webcast got a great response from students worldwide who support the campaign's mission of raising awareness, implementing the checklist and collecting data. Dr. Shabnam Hafiz, who is currently a surgical resident pursuing a career in breast oncology at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., was also instrumental in starting the campaign. Hafiz got interested in the checklist when she was working toward her M.P.H. because she wanted to improve surgical outcomes in low-income, low-resource settings. "This is something that costs nothing and requires no new technology, yet you can get a 50 percent reduction in mortality," she notes.