Agreed. Checklist proponents in this thread oversimplify the issue. In a 2007 article, Atul Gawande, author of the 2009 book Checklist Manifesto, discusses how Peter Pronovost trained his hospital to better follow known surgical procedures,
> The new rule made it clear: if doctors didn’t follow every step on the checklist, the nurses would have backup from the administration to intervene. [1]
So, he didn't just use a checklist. He convinced staff they were making mistakes. The administration changed hospital rules. Then, Atul says,
> They calculated that, in this one hospital, the checklist had prevented forty-three infections and eight deaths, and saved two million dollars in costs.
He claims the checklist is what saved people's lives. He continues saying so for the rest of the article and in his book. It's an oversimplification and misleads the public into believing medicine is simple. The result is the comments you see in this thread. Training people is not simple. Everyone forgets things, even with checklists.
Atul himself later says so,
"It turns out to be much more complex that just having the checklist in hand." [2]
People want to hear about simple solutions. They disengage when a problem is described as complex.
[1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist
[2] http://www.nature.com/news/hospital-checklists-are-meant-to-...