London, April 3 (Inditop.com) Introducing checklists to ensure hospital staff give patients the best possible treatment can significantly reduce mortality rates, a new study has found.
Introducing the checklist system in three London hospitals saw the number of deaths fall by almost 15 percent in a year, according to a team of researchers, including Brian Jarman, a former member of an inquiry into the deaths of heart patients at the Bristol Royal Infirmary.
The lists, known as “care bundles”, were developed by the World Health Organisation for major killers such as strokes, heart failure and COPD. The lists have been found to cut death rates from major operations by up to 40 percent.
The findings, published online by the British Medical Journal, show that there was a 14.5 per cent decrease in deaths in the years after the lists were introduced, 174 fewer deaths in total, telegraph.co.uk reported.
Under the system, doctors or nurses were required to sign their name to say that they had carried out certain treatments, often within a specific time frame.
For example, the checklist for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a range of diseases including emphysema, expressly says that patients should be given a chest x-ray within four hours of admission to hospital.
Some of the checklists also require hospital staff to sign that they have washed their hands before they started to treat patients.
Brian, a former president of the British Medical Association, said: “This is a very effective method of trying to make our medical staff behave more like automatons. It is ensuring the we always do the simple things that we know work.
“We would like to see these lists rolled out to other hospitals across the country.”
However, the research team said their study could not account for all the other changes which happened in the hospitals over this time frame. These included a new staff rota and a new assessment unit at one of the hospitals, which employed four extra consultants.
