Researchers have just announced on Tuesday that a few simple steps may help doctors and nurses from a surgical team significantly lower the number of deaths and complications. A year after after surgical teams at eight hospitals adopted a 19-item checklist, the average patient death rate fell more than 40 percent and the rate of complications fell by about a third.

The senior author of the study, Dr. Atul A. Gawande of the Harvard School of Public Health, said it was hard to identify which items on that checklist were the most important. However, even a small change, like having surgical team members take a moment to say who they are and what they do before scalpel touches skin, can have important consequences later on if one of them develops a concern during the operation.

It is a well known problem that junior members of the surgical team sometimes hesitate to speak up, and this recommendation should help people in this kind of situation. Among other items, we can find a requirement that the nursing staff confirm that everything has been sterilized and that all equipment needed is present. Team members should also confirm that the patient has been given antibiotics ahead of the surgery, in order to reduce the change of infection.

The researchers worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) and conducted the study over a year at hospitals in the United States, Canada, England, Jordan, New Zealand, India, the Philippines and Tanzania. As previously mentioned, some of the hospitals in the study have already begun using the checklist regularly, as the changes can be made quickly and at little cost. Anyway, it's pretty clear that the improvements came from a combination of factors, not from any one of two items on the checklist.