Checklist

A checklist is a type of job aid used in repetitive tasks to reduce failure by compensating for potential limits of human memory and attention.

[4] Use of a well designed checklist can reduce any tendency to avoid, omit or neglect important steps in any task.

[8] The earliest discovered evidence of the “check-list” usage is seen in the “Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of New Hampshire at Their Session Holden at the Capitol in Concord” issued in 1841 and describing the elections-related events of the autumn of 1840.

It is an aid to recall, provides a reminder of the correct sequence, and uses the operator's knowledge and skill efficiently to ensure that no critical steps are omitted, even when the operator is under stress or has degraded attention due to fatigue or other distractions, It allows cross checking, keeps team members informed of the status of readiness, and can provide a legal record of a sequence of events to indicate due diligence.

Checklists are used to help avoid accidental omission of important preparation of equipment and systems.

These may be routine operations like pre-flight checks on an airliner or relatively infrequent occasions like commissioning a nuclear power station or launching a spacecraft.

A signed off checklist with a document describing the listed checks may be accepted as evidence of due diligence.

[citation needed] Checklists have long been a feature of aviation safety to ensure that critical items are not overlooked.

A normal checklist is used before critical flight segments, such as takeoff, approach and landing, which are the phases in which the highest incidence of accidents occur due to procedural error.

They cannot substitute for pilot skill and learned and practiced immediate response to critical malfunctions, but are useful for mitigation attempts when time allows.

[3] In health care, particularly surgery, checklists may be used to ensure that the correct procedure is carried out on each patient.

If a checklist is perceived as a top-down means to control behaviour by the organisational hierarchy it is more likely to be rejected and fail in its purpose.

A checklist should be designed to describe and facilitate a physical procedure that is accepted by the operators as necessary, effective, efficient and convenient.

[10] In the challenge–verification–response, the operators prepare the system following a standard sequence of actions performed from memory, then use the checklist to verify that the critical items have been correctly configured.

One operator reads the challenge part of the checklist, the designated parties verify the status, and one of them provides the appropriate response.

This method is efficient, as each operator can get on with their checks and then when the checklist is run through, all the relevant crew are updated on the system status.

The main factors in typography are legibility of text and readability in the conditions in which the document is expected to be used.

Research has shown that sans-serif is more legible than Roman as the absence of serifs presents simple and clean typeface.

The use of multiple type faces in body text can be confusing and significantly reduces readability, so should be avoided.

[6] It may be useful to cross-reference the checklist to the standard procedure document, where the process is definitively described in detail, particularly for training and audit purposes.

Where items to be checked are spatially distributed, an order minimising travel or search time is efficient.

Aviation checklists generally consist of a system and an action divided by a dashed line, and lack a checkbox as they are often read aloud and are usually intended to be reused.

[6] Error conditions that may occur include: During the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearings into the crash of Northwest Airlines Flight 255, human factors specialist Earl Weiner testified that he "did not know of any human factors research on how a checklist should be designed".

This was followed by a document from the UK CAA: "CAP 676: Guidance on the Design, Presentation, and Use of Emergency and Abnormal Checklist".