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

Atul Gawande

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Atul Gawande
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: May 11
Journalist
Medical Writer
Professor
Researcher
Surgeon
Brooklyn
New York
Atul A Gawande
Atul Gawande
Villain
Doctors
Mistakes
Mistake
Make
Villains

More quotes by Atul Gawande

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This is the reality of intensive care: at any point, we are as apt to harm as we are to heal.
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If I became just a brain in a jar - as long as I can communicate back and forth with people, that would be okay with me.
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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 values we doctors are being pressed to embrace are humility, teamwork, and discipline.
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We always hope for the easy fix: the one simple change that will erase a problem in a stroke. But few things in life work this way. Instead, success requires making a hundred small steps go right - one after the other, no slipups, no goofs, everyone pitching in.
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Writing lets you step back and think through a problem. Even the angriest rant forces the writer to achieve a degree of thoughtfulness.
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What about regular professionals, who just want to do what they do as well as they can?
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We recruit for attitude and train for skill.
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We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still the way norms and standards change.
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Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine.
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You can't make a recipe for something as complicated as surgery. Instead, you can make a recipe for how to have a team that's prepared for the unexpected.
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Human interaction is the key force in overcoming resistance and speeding change.
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Checklists turn out...to be among the basic tools of the quality and productivity revolution in aviation, engineering, construction - in virtually every field combining high risk and complexity. Checklists seem lowly and simplistic, but they help fill in for the gaps in our brains and between our brains.
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One of the consequences of if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, is that all of us now are at risk of being a preexisting - of having a preexisting condition waiting to happen. Life, increasingly, is a preexisting condition waiting to happen, now that we have more and more of this data available.
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Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance.
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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.
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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 clinicians can handle.
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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.
Atul Gawande
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Arriving at an acceptance of one's mortality is a process, not an epiphany.
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I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn't one of them.
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Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you.
Atul Gawande