Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals: How one doctor's checklist can help us change health care from the inside out by Peter Provonost and Eric Vohr

Summary

First, do no harm. Doctors, nurses, and clinicians swear by this code of conduct. Yet, medical errors are made every single day - avoidable mistakes that often cost lives.

Inspired by two such mistakes, Dr. Peter Pronovost made it his personal mission to improve patient safety and make preventable deaths a thing of the past, one hospital at a time. Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals shows how Dr. Pronovost started a revolution by creating a simple checklist that standardised a common ICU procedure. His reforms are being implemented in all fifty states of the US and have saved hundreds of lives by cutting hospital-acquired infection rates by 70%.

Atul Gawande profiled Dr. Pronovost's reforms in a New Yorker article and his bestselling book The Checklist Manifesto is based upon Dr. Pronovost's success in patient safety. But Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals is the real story: an inspiring, thought-provoking, accessible insider's narrative about how doctors and nurses are improving patient care.