Auditorium Ivan Pictet | Maison de la Paix
From Paper to Policy in 10 Years: How a checklist is transforming global surgery. Organised by Lifebox and the Global Health Centre
Most of us will need surgery at some point in our lives and have family members affected by surgery. But an operation is much more than a series of technical steps: it informs patient safety, public health policy, dignity of choice. Around the world, healthcare systems cannot keep pace. In low-resource settings, surgical patients and providers struggle to access life-saving research, advocacy and ongoing training. The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist, a global framework for safer practice was created to fill this gap and has spread to operating rooms across the globe in just 10 years.
Join surgeon and author Professor Atul Gawande in a conversation with Professor Ilona Kickbusch, the Director of Global Health Centre, as we consider:
How access to safe surgery is fundamental to meeting the SDGs?
What influenced the remarkable spread of the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist around the world?
What are mechanisms that can promote surgical equity when 5 billion people lack access to safe surgical care?
Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, is a surgeon, writer, and public health researcher. He practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. He is Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.
He is also Executive Director of Ariadne Labs, a joint centre for health systems innovation, and Chairman of Lifebox, a non-profit organisation making surgery safer globally. In addition to his medical work, Atul has been a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine since 1998 and has written four New York Times bestsellers: Complications, Better, The Checklist Manifesto, and most recently, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. He is the winner of two consecutive National Magazine Awards in 2010 and 2011; the Academy Health’s Impact Award for highest research impact on healthcare; a MacArthur Fellowship; and the Lewis Thomas Award for writing about science.
A decade of safer surgery around the world - video
10 years of the Surgical Safety Checklist
A surgical safety checklist to reduce morbidity and mortality in a global population
More information about Lifebox