Every so often, a pregnant woman whose water broke the day before — maybe even two or three days before — is rushed into the urban teaching hospital where Dr. Rosemary Ogu delivers babies and trains new doctors. The mother has waited to come to the hospital and now she needs urgent medical attention. In… Continue reading Enhancing best practices to improve childbirth care in Nigeria
Primary health care is one of the most cost-effective ways to equitably reduce morbidity and mortality and improve population health One of the most important but most neglected systems required for meeting people’s health needs is primary health care. The Ariadne Labs primary health care research team is working around the world to understand what… Continue reading Data providing important insights into strengths and weaknesses of primary health care
By Katherine Semrau, Ph.D. Growing up in West Tennessee, I have fond memories of going to see my grandparents with my family. Mind you, this trip was not on a short car trip, bus or train ride. It was an eight-hour flight in a small Cessna with me, my sister, my mom and my father—who… Continue reading What can maternal health learn from the aviation industry?
By Dr. George Molina The use of a surgical safety checklist was associated with a lower 30-day postoperative mortality rate after emergency abdominal surgery compared with the same operations performed at hospitals that did not have a checklist, according to a recent study by the GlobalSurg Collaborative in the British Journal of Surgery (BJS). This… Continue reading Using a surgical safety checklist saves lives, according to an international study
Ariadne Labs Executive Director Dr. Atul Gawande testified on June 23 before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging on how we, as a nation, can improve care for individuals with serious illness. The hearing, “The Right Care at the Right Time: Ensuring Person-Centered Care for Individuals with Serious Illness.” was led by Committee Chair… Continue reading Read Dr. Atul Gawande’s testimony before U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging on serious illness
Ariadne Labs Executive Director Dr. Atul Gawande delivered the 2016 Commencement address at the California Institute of Technology June 10, telling graduates that as the newest member of the scientific community they “also inherit a role in explaining it and helping it reclaim territory of trust at a time when that territory has been shrinking.” In his… Continue reading Atul Gawande to Caltech graduates: Science is not a major, it’s a commitment to a way of thinking
By Sarah Kessler Lifebox Foundation is the only NGO in the world devoted to safer surgery in low-resource countries. An independent charity led by Ariadne Labs Executive Director Atul Gawande, we deliver targeted interventions that support effective use of the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist in some of the most challenging surgical environments around the world.… Continue reading Five years of Lifebox: 10 million stories of safer surgery
By Emily George, RN, BSN, MPH In the past three decades in the United States, there has been a significant shift in surgical volume from inpatient to outpatient settings, including both hospital outpatient departments and free-standing Ambulatory Surgery Centers (ASCs). As this trend became more visible, Ariadne Labs partnered with Agency for Healthcare Research and… Continue reading Supportive coaching and collaborative learning: A scalable solution for improving quality in ambulatory surgery centers
Ariadne Labs’ most established and well-recognized work has been improving the safety of surgery worldwide with the Safe Surgery Checklist. Developed with the World Health Organization and now used in some 50 million of 300 million operations performed globally, the checklist has been shown to reduce surgical complications and mortality by 18 to 47 percent.… Continue reading New Safe Surgery Checklist Implementation Guide offers a practical framework for success with the Safe Surgery Checklist
By Mary Brindle, M.D., MPH One of our projects at Ariadne Labs is to better understand how physicians and nurses have been using checklists to make surgery safer for children. I am a pediatric surgeon on sabbatical in Boston this year. I normally work in Calgary, Alberta, one of the largest cities in Canada. In… Continue reading Designing a checklist that makes surgery safer for children