I read this book several years ago when I was working in the patient experience/CQI arena. At the time, I was already an avid checklist user for a variety of things both personally and professionally.
I was always amazed at how reluctant health care professionals were (and many still are ) to adopt common sense and relatively easy to implement process changes that help improve patient safety
In terms of testing, I use checklists to make sure that I’ve covered all the important things pre and post deployment to production. As I’m testing I keep checklists (more like a mind map really) to keep myself organized, report back to my developer and note things that I want to take a closer look at.
As a mobile tester, I keep checklists to ensure I test quirky OS’s/devices as all are not created equal. I especially need to test the quirks, so having a checklist of each quirk is helpful for regression checks.
Overall I’m a huge fan of Dr. Gawande, his writing is provocative, articulate, relatable and inspiring.