>I'm a bit perplexed that something so simple, can reduce post surgical deaths by a third.
Because it didn't. It attributes the entirety of a decade long decline to the check list, which is obviously nonsense. I'm not saying that checklists aren't good, but they're not miracle workers.
>The Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) is a national initiative which aims to improve in‐hospital mortality rates in Scotland. The SPSP was established in 2008 and had perioperative management, including implementation of the WHO surgical checklist, as one of its four key initial workstreams. This programme offered a systematic approach to improve patient safety across all hospitals in the country26.
>After testing, review and feedback from health boards across Scotland, the surgical checklist was included as one of the ten Patient Safety Essentials to be implemented across all health boards in Scotland37. The surgical checklist was not a stand‐alone intervention. It was, however, the only Patient Safety Essential that targeted surgical patients specifically during the interval studied37. Thus, the addition of the checklist to the other parameters within the SPSP may have contributed to the improvement in results observed in the present study.
>It is acknowledged that attributing causal links to the findings in population‐wide data set analysis is not possible.
What you said they didn't do is kind of exactly what they did. Yes, there is some attempts at hand waving, but it's silly to boil down the success of a large and multi pronged program to a simple checklist.
If the checklist is responsible for all of the improvement in surgical outcomes then we can stop doing the rest of the stuff, right? No need to emphasize hand washing or sterile central line because the magic checklist will stop the infection.
Even if the checklist was responsible for all of the improvement in surgical outcomes that doesn't mean the other items don't have an affect anywhere else. And again, it's not hand-waving to suggest that the item that has the largest direct impact on surgical operations is mainly responsible for the reduction. There's a difference between you wanting a more thorough study and something being "obviously nonsense".
Please point out the parts of it that you find to be scientifically failing.
There's a valid point to be made that the original article implies a greater causal link than the study, but that isn't the study's fault, and it doesn't actually diminish the effect of the checklist in the process. Poor reporting on science is always a problem, and journalists typically use layperson phrasing in order to make the information more consumable.
Because it didn't. It attributes the entirety of a decade long decline to the check list, which is obviously nonsense. I'm not saying that checklists aren't good, but they're not miracle workers.