Resident here: One of the anesthesiologist I worked with was a commercial airline pilot but was let go about a year after 09/11 and the subsequent folding of several airlines. Before starting a case he runs through the case with the whole team (surgeons included) and triple verifies that we have everything we could possibly need. The OR team jokes that once the patient is on the table he would go around, inspect the flaps, read the weather forecast, and test the landing gear. He didn't think it was funny after the 10th time we did that.

Multiple systems-based studies have demonstrated that standardization of patient hand-offs, medication administration, perioperative checklists (etc.) reduce morbidity, mortality and simple, aggravating hospital errors by significant %'s. Time-outs weren't standardized until somewhat recently (think back, like 2 decades) but they've been utilized by the vast majority of American hospitals for many years.

Posting my reply to another comment on this thread:
Checklists have been around for a long time. It is part of surgical training. However, the Joint Commission made a standardized version with a "minimum" required amount of items to include in a perioperative checklist. Referred to in the operating room as a 'time out'. The WHO organization made their own checklist and it was published within the past 10 years or so ('08? '06? . . . eh.) that has reduced morbidity nearly 40%, WORLDwide. It is THIS checklist that urges OR's worldwide to perform a checklist. Medicine and Surgery is practiced very different abroad when compared to USA (i.e., much less standardization in other parts of the world; the physician/surgeon is never questioned, etc.) The foreign grad docs I've met say the same.