Definition
A pause-point is a defined moment in a workflow at which the team must stop and run a checklist before proceeding. The term comes from aviation, where pre-flight, before-takeoff, and emergency pause-points anchor the pilot's checklist book. In the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist, three pause-points structure the operation: before anaesthesia, before incision, and before the patient leaves the room.
A pause-point is the structural anchor that makes a written list into a real practice. Without one, the list will not be run consistently — there is no shared moment when "now" arrives.
Why it matters
How it works
The design move is to identify, in the existing workflow, the commit-point — the threshold past which a wrong assumption becomes expensive to fix — and to insert a brief, mandatory pause just before it. Anaesthesia is one such threshold; incision is another; "send this customer email" is another in a product launch. The pause is short by design: in surgery, two minutes total across all three points; in aviation, around 30–60 seconds per check.
The pause must be named in the process documentation. "Before incision" is a real pause-point because surgical training names it; "around 11 a.m.-ish" is not. The pause must also be owned — someone other than the most senior person should be empowered to call it, so a busy expert cannot accidentally skip past it.