Checklists vs. checkmate: Reproducibility key to premium surgery success

Traditionally, checkmate is a position in the game of chess in which a player’s king is in check, without a way to remove the threat. The king cannot be captured, so the game ends when the king is checkmated. As a premium surgeon, no one ever wants to be checkmated at any stage of the surgical process, from preoperative to intraoperative to postoperative. Other forms of etymology have suggested checkmate to signify being “ambushed,” a feeling many of us have experienced in our surgical careers. A means to avoiding being a checkmated surgeon is creating “checklists” from the time of the first patient encounter until the final postoperative visit. The process of checklists can bring reproducibility to a surgical process that already yields successful outcomes in a premium surgeon’s practice.