Checklist Application in Aviation and Healthcare

Abstract

Aviation and healthcare are professional domains that are characterized by high safety requirements. Human failure is identified as the major cause for aviation accidents and medical complications. In both fields, checklists – that are applied in regular and abnormal situations – are reliable and capable tools to meet the high safety aspirations and to reduce or avoid mistakes and their partially severe consequences. The benefits of this rather simple method are exploited best when they are embedded in an overall safety culture of the organization. Checklist discipline, correct application and teamwork are key for their effective contribution to safety – be it in surgery or flight. Moreover, checklists support decision-making due to their capacity to reduce complexity and ambiguity. The structured, standardized proceeding is in particular valuable. This paper describes how checklists function generally and how their application in aviation spilled over to medicine and became also indispensable in daily business.