“…all the glamour of compiling a grocery list”

Yesterday’s New York Times article: “In Hospitals, Simple Reminders Reduce Deadly Infections,” is yet more concrete evidence that hospital acquired infections are not inevitable and can be controlled. Hospitals incorporating the “checklist” pioneered by Dr. Peter Pronovost of Johns Hopkins have reduced their infection rates by as much as 78 percent:

The turning point in the campaign to stop hospital infections in New York had all the glamour of compiling a grocery list.

In late 2005, the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation adopted a series of simple, standardized protocols based on those developed by Dr. Peter J. Pronovost, a crusader against preventable hospital deaths and a professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Pronovost calls his protocols a checklist, and that is pretty much what they are.

A red binder at the nursing station at Woodhull contains dozens of forms, labeled “Central Venous Catheter Insertion Checklist,” which instruct doctors to, first of all, make sure that they have the right patient and are planning the right procedure. The 14-item list goes on to include washing hands; putting on caps, masks, sterile gowns and gloves; draping the patient from head to toe; preparing the patient’s skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic; maintaining a sterile field; and applying a sterile dressing.

One person, usually a nurse, acts as the referee by calling, “Timeout!” and checking off the “completed” or “not completed” columns on the list as each step is called out and performed.

Here are a couple of questions: How many hospitals in Massachusetts are using the checklist? How many are thinking about it? Is anyone keeping track? Is anyone asking?