Every day we are challenged as premium surgeons with an unusual preoperative diagnostic measurement, intraoperative unexpected complex situation and/or a postoperative unrealistic expectation. There are many scenarios throughout the refractive cataract surgical experience that can potentially bring the premium surgeon into a “checkmate” position.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.
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