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.
>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.
That's hardly hand-waving.
Here's the 10 safety essentials check list they are talking about:
http://www.healthcareimprovementscotland.org/news_and_events...
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.
Here's a link to the study.
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.