If we took away the ability to put defibrillators in people in their last years, people would be shouting in the streets. — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
These are folks that keep people out of hospitals, out of emergency rooms, out of nursing homes. And not only that, they… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
The evidence is that people who enter hospice don't have shorter lives. In many cases they are longer. — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
If the conversation people think is coming is the 'death panel' conversation, that's a total failure. — 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
The definition of what it means to be dying has changed radically. We are able to extend people's lives considerably, including sometimes,… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
When I do an operation, it's half a dozen people. When it goes beautifully, it's like a symphony, with everybody playing their… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Health care confronts us with a difficult test. We have never corrected failure in something so deeply embedded in people's lives and… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
You want to ensure people can do it right 99 percent of time. When we have to fire one of our surgical… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Most people are squeamish about saying how much they earn, but in medicine the situation seems especially fraught. Doctors aren't supposed to… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
The Affordable Care Act also offered protections that allow for preexisting conditions, as people know, that you're provided coverage and you can… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
The writing I love has something memorable in it - an image, a smell. It's the connection between the moment and the… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
There are times when you have sharp elbows, and people are trying to muscle you out of certain meetings - because then… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Human beings are social creatures. We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
The health-care sector certainly employs more people and more machines than it did. But there have been no great strides in service.… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
People who reach certain levels of frailty, more important than getting their mammogram, more important than getting their blood pressure tweaked, they're… — 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
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
What is needed, however, isn't just that people working together be nice to each other. It is discipline. Discipline is hard--harder than… — 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
People underestimate the importance of dilligence as a virtue. No doubt it has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems.… — 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
Just look at the list of who the lowest-paid people are. Pediatricians are at the bottom. You would also look at internists.… — 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
If I became just a brain in a jar - as long as I can communicate back and forth with people, that… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
In one study, old people assigned to a geriatrics team stayed independent for far longer, and were admitted to the hospital less. — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still the way norms and standards change. — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
At times, in medicine, you feel you are inside a colossal and impossibly complex machine whose gears will turn for you only… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
One of the reasons people might be fallible, why we might fail to do what we try to do isignorance, that we… — Atul Gawande Copy Share Image
Go back to the '30s, '40s, '50s, and it was the discovery of heroic interventions, the ability to cure people with penicillin… — 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
