Atul Gawande quotes

No matter what measures are taken, doctors will sometimes falter, and it isn't reasonable to ask that we achieve perfection. What is reasonable is to ask that we never cease to aim for it. (Atul Gawande)
Practice is funny that way. For days and days, you make out only the fragments of what to do. And then one day you've got the thing whole. Conscious learning becomes unconscious knowledge, and you cannot say precisely how. View quote
Atul Gawande
Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try. View quote
Atul Gawande
You may not control life's circumstances, but getting to be the author of your life means getting to control what you do with them. View quote
Atul Gawande
Courage is strength in the face of knowledge of what is to be feared or hoped. Wisdom is prudent strength. View quote
Atul Gawande
Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you. View quote
Atul Gawande
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 it. Ask a patient or a colleague what they think about it. See if you can keep the conversation going. View quote
Atul Gawande
Man is fallible, but maybe men are less so. View quote
Atul Gawande
We recruit for attitude and train for skill. View quote
Atul Gawande
You want to ensure people can do it right 99 percent of time. When we have to fire one of our surgical trainees, it is never because they don't have the physical skills but because they don't have the moral skills - to practise and admit failure. View quote
Atul Gawande
I think the extreme complexity of medicine has become more than an individual clinician can handle. But not more than teams of clinicians can handle. (Atul Gawande)
As economists have often pointed out, we pay doctors for quantity, not quality. As they point out less often, we also pay them as individuals, rather than as members of a team working together for their patients. Both practices have made for serious problems. View quote
Atul Gawande
No one teaches you how to think about money in medical school or residency. Yet, from the moment you start practicing, you must think about it. You must consider what is covered for a patient and what is not. View quote
Atul Gawande
In every industrialized nation, the movement to reform health care has begun with stories about cruelty. View quote
Atul Gawande
Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine. View quote
Atul Gawande
Outsiders tend to be the first to recognize the inadequacies of our social institutions. But, precisely because they are outsiders, they are usually in a poor position to fix them. View quote
Atul Gawande
You know, 97 percent of the time, if you come into a hospital, everything goes well. But three percent of the time, we have major complications. View quote
Atul Gawande
This is the reality of intensive care: at any point, we are as apt to harm as we are to heal. View quote
Atul Gawande
The damage that the human body can survive these days is as awesome as it is horrible: crushing, burning, bombing, a burst blood vessel in the brain, a ruptured colon, a massive heart attack, rampaging infection. These conditions had once been uniformly fatal. View quote
Atul Gawande
To become a doctor, you spend so much time in the tunnels of preparation - head down, trying not to screw up, trying to make it from one day to the next - that it is a shock to find yourself at the other end, with someone shaking your hand and asking how much money you want to make. View quote
Atul Gawande
Providing health care is like building a house. The task requires experts, expensive equipment and materials, and a huge amount of coordination. (Atul Gawande)
No one looks at your hands to see how much they shake when you are interviewed to be a surgeon. The physical skills required are no greater than for writing cursive script. If an operation requires so much skill only a few surgeons can do it, you modify the operation to make it simpler. View quote
Atul Gawande
Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end. View quote
Atul Gawande
how we seek to spend our time may depend on how much time we perceive ourselves to have. View quote
Atul Gawande
We've been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. View quote
Atul Gawande