Interesting. I sat in on a few surgeries years ago when I thinking about going pre-med and I saw many checklists. There were counts of instruments used, rags used, checking and double checking all through the surgery. Maybe it was only these 2 older surgeons who did this, but it seemed pretty useful.

I distinctly remember having a hanging shoe rack like thing where each rag used was put to make counting easy. The count was off at the end of one of the surgeries so they went through it again, and it turned out one of the slots had 2 rags.