“we need practice to get good at what we do. There is one difference in medicine, though: it is people we practice… — 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
As economists have often pointed out, we pay doctors for quantity, not quality. As they point out less often, we also pay… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“We want progress in medicine to be clear and unequivocal, but of course it rarely is. Every new treatment has gaping unknowns… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
I think we are faced in medicine with the reality that we have to be willing to talk about our failures and… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Doctors quickly learn that how much they make has little to do with how good they are. It largely depends on how… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science,… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“In other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“There is a saying about surgeons, meant as a reproof: "Sometimes wrong; never in doubt." But this seemed to me their strength.… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
No matter what measures are taken, doctors will sometimes falter, and it isn't reasonable to ask that we achieve perfection. What is… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“Death, of course, is not a failure. Death is normal. Death may be the enemy, but it is also the natural order… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
I talked to over two hundred patients and family members about their experiences with aging, serious illnesses, and the big unfixables. But… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“The progress of medicine and public health has been an incredible boon—people get to live longer, healthier, more productive lives than ever… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“The simple view is that medicine exists to fight death and disease, and that is, of course, its most basic task. Death… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“Medicine’s ground state is uncertainty. And wisdom—for both patients and doctors—is defined by how one copes with it. This” — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
People say that the most expensive piece of medical equipment is the doctor's pen. It's not that we make all the money.… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
After readinf some essay on the nature of human fallibility, I was very aware that we are the recipients of a huge… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
The possibilities and probabilities are all we have to work with in medicine, though. What we are drawn to in this imperfect… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
To become a doctor, you spend so much time in the tunnels of preparation - head down, trying not to screw up,… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
I think the extreme complexity of medicine has become more than an individual clinician can handle. But not more than teams of… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“Our responsibility, in medicine, is to deal with human beings as they are. People die only once.” — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“The core predicament of medicine - the thing that makes being a patient so wrenching, being a doctor so difficult, and being… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Our great struggle in medicine these days is not just with ignorance and uncertainty. It's also with complexity: how much you have… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
“If there is a credo in practical medicine, it is that the important thing is to be sensible.” — 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
