Medical error is third biggest cause of death in the US, experts say
Every time someone in the medical field tells me about how dangerous motorcycles are, I remind them of the woman I knew (world-class rider in some aspects of the sport) who was in a motorcycle crash. The crash didn&#x27;t kill her, the people giving her the wrong drugs did.<p>Years later I read _The Checklist Manifesto_, only to be horrified that not only did medical personnel need to be <i>told</i> to use checklists, many resisted the idea. It&#x27;s one thing to kill people because of a mistake, we all make them and thankfully the ones <i>I</i> make usually don&#x27;t get anyone hurt. But it&#x27;s quite another to kill someone because your industry is one step ahead of using leeches. I mean, suppose I make a commit that rolls into production and takes out production data. Someone asks, &quot;did you follow the checklist?&quot; If I say, &quot;yes&quot;, it&#x27;s unlikely that heads will roll and we&#x27;ll update the list when we find out what went wrong. But if my answer is, &quot;no. In fact, I don&#x27;t even have a checklist&#x2F;documented procedure, I just make sure my commit message is informative and hope I remembered everything&quot;, I&#x27;m likely to get fired. A doctor does it, shrugs it off with &quot;we did everything we could&quot;, and a lot of time we all just go on about our day.