Atul Gawande wrote the Checklist Manifesto (http://gawande.com/the-checklist-manifesto) which goes into a lot more detail about all this. I would thoroughly recommend reading it if you want to improve how you get stuff done.

Checklists (or scripts) also work well in education:

http://www.jefflindsay.com/EducData.shtml

http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com/honestft.htm

http://www.projectpro.com/ICR/Research/DI/Summary.htm

HN-ers, listen to this business proposition (this is not a sarcasm, but this is an idea, a perspective if you will).

Find one of the productivity books, preferably ones that are quite popular. Implement a software, web-app, mobile-app, desktop-app, plugins, whatever, based on such books.You'll get instant userbase that love your software.

Rinse-and-repeat.

There are a few productivity tools based on GTD out there. Looking at the checklist-for-checklists link that adolph mentioned in this thread reminds me of Trello. Seems like a simple money making scheme don't you think?

I have a number of checklists I use, from deployment to form design, but the practice that has had the biggest impact for me is creating on-the-fly checklists while I'm coding. I often set out to do one thing and realize there are four or five other things that need to be implemented or changed. I used to try to keep track of everything in my head, but when your mental todo list starts looking like a complicated digraph, that just isn't effective. Now I don't code without a scratch pad by my side.

I guess that a hospital is like the military in that there has to be clearly delineated chain of command, but some points raised in the article could be solved by empowering doctors and especially nurses:

"chlorhexidine soap, shown to reduce line infections, was available in fewer than a third of the I.C.U.s. This was a problem only an executive could solve"

If nurses and doctors were empowered, that problem probably wouldn't have arisen.

I agree that other solutions are more in executives' territory: "they persuaded Arrow International, one of the largest manufacturers of central lines, to produce a new central-line kit that had both the drape and chlorhexidine in it."

Challenge HN: Share your checklist for training yourself to be a better hacker. Or to have more successful projects.

I think all of these checklist ideas are great, but does anyone have any suggestions regarding how to make the decision makers in the medical community pay attention? It sounds like there are possible opportunities here.

I used to travel a lot for work. My "Master Packing List", has meant I no longer find myself meeting clients without, say, a belt, or socks, or laptop charger, etc.

I've seen this many times and it never gets old.