Does Your Business Use Checklists?
Checklists are a simple and useful tool businesses can employ to make sure steps are not forgotten or overlooked. This week a Florida diving company, RJ Diving Ventures, took a group of tourists out in the open ocean to scuba dive and left two of the tourists behind three miles from shore. The two tourists surfaced to find the charter boat gone, and ended up clinging to a fishing buoy for two hours before being rescued by a passing yacht. RJ Diving Ventures is lucky nothing serious happened to the stranded scuba divers.
Back in 2009, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article outlining the benefits from having a surgical safety checklist implemented in hospitals. The article was based on a one year study occurring in eight hospitals in eight cities throughout the world. The general conclusions were the use of a checklist/cheat sheet reduced patient complications and death.
Many other industries also use checklists including airlines, property management, and manufacturing companies. The use of checklists isn’t just necessary for safety reasons, but can also make work more efficient, because the steps which need to be followed are clearly outlined.
The stranding of two tourist scuba divers should have never happened and was easily preventable. All the crew on the charter boat needed was a simple checklist to review, outlining the necessary steps to take before departing any location, specifically confirming all passengers and equipment are safely on board. All businesses should review their work processes, and determine if having a checklist will ensure important steps are not missed.
