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Medicine Quotes by Atul Gawande

43 Medicine quotes by Atul Gawande

All Medicine quotes Atul Gawande’s page

Atul Gawande reminds us that doctors practice on people, so getting good needs real‑world experience, not just theory. He points out that the system often pays for quantity over quality, and that honest talks about failures are needed even when malpractice worries loom. He also says doctors can make big mistakes that hurt patients, so aiming for perfection is unrealistic, but striving for better decisions is essential.

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Are doctors who make mistakes villains? No, because then we all are.

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Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine.

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“Medicine’s ground state is uncertainty. And wisdom—for both patients and doctors—is defined by how one copes with it. This”

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“Death, of course, is not a failure. Death is normal. Death may be the enemy, but it is also the natural order…

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Doctors quickly learn that how much they make has little to do with how good they are. It largely depends on how…

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I think the extreme complexity of medicine has become more than an individual clinician can handle. But not more than teams of…

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“If there is a credo in practical medicine, it is that the important thing is to be sensible.”

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People say that the most expensive piece of medical equipment is the doctor's pen. It's not that we make all the money.…

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“we need practice to get good at what we do. There is one difference in medicine, though: it is people we practice…

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“Our responsibility, in medicine, is to deal with human beings as they are. People die only once.”

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“One American in seven has no coverage, and one in three younger than sixty-five will lose coverage at some point in the…

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I think we are faced in medicine with the reality that we have to be willing to talk about our failures and…

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“In other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm…

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The vast majority of doctors really do try to take the money out of their minds. But to provide the best possible…

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“In other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm…

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When we, doctors, ask patients what their priorities are if time is short, what we do is we use what is available…

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Most people are squeamish about saying how much they earn, but in medicine the situation seems especially fraught. Doctors aren't supposed to…

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The possibilities and probabilities are all we have to work with in medicine, though. What we are drawn to in this imperfect…

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“The simple view is that medicine exists to fight death and disease, and that is, of course, its most basic task. Death…

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After readinf some essay on the nature of human fallibility, I was very aware that we are the recipients of a huge…

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“Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine. In the early twentieth century, you needed only a high school diploma and a one-year…

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“The core predicament of medicine - the thing that makes being a patient so wrenching, being a doctor so difficult, and being…

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I talked to over two hundred patients and family members about their experiences with aging, serious illnesses, and the big unfixables. But…

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“Betterment is perpetual labor. The world is chaotic, disorganized, and vexing, and medicine is nowhere spared that reality. To complicate matters, we…

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“A large part of the task is helping people negotiate the overwhelming anxiety—anxiety about death, anxiety about suffering, anxiety about loved ones,…

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We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science,…

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“Technological society has forgotten what scholars call the “dying role” and its importance to people as life approaches its end. People want…

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“There is a saying about surgeons, meant as a reproof: "Sometimes wrong; never in doubt." But this seemed to me their strength.…

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“I am leery of suggesting the idea that endings are controllable. No one ever really has control. Physics and biology and accident…

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“The progress of medicine and public health has been an incredible boon—people get to live longer, healthier, more productive lives than ever…

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“In this work against sickness, we begin not with genetic or cellular interactions, but with human ones. They are what make medicine…

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Just using a checklist requires [doctors] to embrace different values from ones we've had, like humility, discipline, teamwork.

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“The pressure remains all in one direction, toward doing more, because the only mistake clinicians seem to fear is doing too little.…

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To become a doctor, you spend so much time in the tunnels of preparation - head down, trying not to screw up,…

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At times, in medicine, you feel you are inside a colossal and impossibly complex machine whose gears will turn for you only…

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Our great struggle in medicine these days is not just with ignorance and uncertainty. It's also with complexity: how much you have…

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Culture matters. Of course, if physicians are rewarded or penalized for their service and results, the culture will change. But the key…

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“We want progress in medicine to be clear and unequivocal, but of course it rarely is. Every new treatment has gaping unknowns…

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Having great components is not enough, and yet we've been obsessed in medicine with components. We want the best drugs, the best…

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“The problem with medicine and the institutions it has spawned for the care of the sick and the old is not that…

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“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…

“we need practice to get good at what we do. There is one difference in medicine, though: it is people we practice upon.”

People underestimate the importance of dilligence as a virtue. No doubt it has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is…

Developing a skill is painful, though. It is difficult. And that's part of the satisfaction. You will only find meaning in what you struggle…

Just look at the list of who the lowest-paid people are. Pediatricians are at the bottom. You would also look at internists. You would…

“When Felix came to this crossroads, the orthopedic shoe to drop wasn’t his. It was Bella’s. Year by year, I witnessed the progression in…