Gentlemen,
As both a consultant surgeon and a pilot I can tell you that there are certain similarities between the two professions but would agree with slim slag that the procedural nature of the anaesthetist's role is far closer to that of a pilot than that of the surgeon's.
As a matter of fact checklists and safety checks in surgery do exist and have done for some time but measuring outcome (which is a key assessment tool for evaluating the impact of any checklist or training endeavour) is nigh on impossible in some specialities and very difficult in others.
It is easy to measure outcome if you are a cardiac surgeon for example, you can measure survival rates and how often the bypass grafts you plumb in block up, but in a speciality where nobody ever dies it is very difficult to measure hard outcomes and you have to lok at perceived quality of life improvement. This is where it gets a bit nebulous.
SB