The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one’s life, — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“an average of $94,000 during the last year of life with a metastatic breast cancer. Our medical system is excellent at trying… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“The problem with medicine and the institutions it has spawned for the care of the sick and the old is not that… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“I do not come in saying, ‘I’m so sorry.’ Instead, it’s: ‘I’m the hospice nurse, and here’s what I have to offer… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one’s story is essential to sustaining meaning… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
My own son has a congenital heart condition, where his life was saved by a cardiac surgeon stepping in at 11 days… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“In the United States, 25 percent of all Medicare spending is for the 5 percent of patients who are in their final… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“Three Plagues of nursing home existence: boredom, loneliness, and helplessness.” — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“Nursing homes have come a long way from the firetrap warehouses of neglect they used to be. But it seems we've succumbed… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
I have always believed that there is nothing greater than a life in rock n' roll - it has to be good… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Sometimes we can offer a cure, sometimes only a salve, sometimes not even that. But whatever we can offer, our interventions, and… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments-which, after all, is mostly nothing much… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“We know the dance moves. You agree to become a patient, and I, the clinician, agree to try to fix you, whatever… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“With luck and fastidiousness—eating well, exercising, keeping our blood pressure under control, getting medical help when we need it—people can often live… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“Consider the fact that we care deeply about what happens to the world after we die. If self-interests were the primary source… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Over time I learned that there are two very different satisfactions that you can have in your life. One is the satisfaction… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Once you start to ask patients about their priorities, you discover what they're living for. Once you uncover that, it helps you,… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
I believe that one version of the good in life can be defined by the moments I sometimes had playing tennis as… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“Betterment is perpetual labor. The world is chaotic, disorganized, and vexing, and medicine is nowhere spared that reality. To complicate matters, we… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“One essential characteristic of modern life is that we all depend on systems—on assemblages of people or technologies or both—and among our… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“One day, however, they had an experience that revealed just how fragile their life had become. Bella developed a cold, causing fluid… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“The soaring cost of health care has become the greatest threat to the long-term solvency of most advanced nations, and the incurable… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“The pressure remains all in one direction, toward doing more, because the only mistake clinicians seem to fear is doing too little.… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you. — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Don’t let yourself be. Find something new to try, something to change. Count how often it succeeds and how often it doesn’t. Write about… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“Wilson spent several days camped out in one government office after another until she had secured an exemption. Unbelievably, she and her husband cleared… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
What is needed, however, isn't just that people working together be nice to each other. It is discipline. Discipline is hard--harder than trustworthiness and… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“8. Chapter 4 describes the birth of the assisted-living facility concept (Park Place), designed by Keren Wilson to provide her disabled mother, Jessie, with… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
When we lived in a society where we had large families that lived together, especially in agricultural societies like my grandfather and father grew… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
My biggest fear, that 27 percent of Americans under 65 have an existing health condition that, without the protections of the Affordable Care Act,… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“..how we seek to spend our time may depend on how much time we perceive ourselves to have. When you are young and healthy,… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“I cannot pretend he escaped unscathed. The extended period of low blood pressure damaged an optic nerve and left him essentially blind in one… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one’s life, — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“an average of $94,000 during the last year of life with a metastatic breast cancer. Our medical system is excellent at trying to stave… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“we need practice to get good at what we do. There is one difference in medicine, though: it is people we practice upon.” — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
People underestimate the importance of dilligence as a virtue. No doubt it has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
