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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
Villains
Villain
Doctors
Mistakes
Mistake
Make

More quotes by Atul Gawande

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Man is fallible, but maybe men are less so.
Atul Gawande
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I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn't one of them.
Atul Gawande
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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.
Atul Gawande
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Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine.
Atul Gawande
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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.
Atul Gawande
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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.
Atul Gawande
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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.
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.
Atul Gawande
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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 to us - whether it's geriatric care or palliative care or hospice care - to make sure they're living the kind of life that they want to live.
Atul Gawande
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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.
Atul Gawande
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Arriving at an acceptance of one's mortality is a process, not an epiphany.
Atul Gawande
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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 science, what we in fact covet in our way, is the alterable moment-the fragile but crystalline opportunity for one's know-how, ability, or just gut instinct to change the course of another's life for the better.
Atul Gawande
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Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance.
Atul Gawande
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A failure often does not have to be a failure at all. However, you have to be ready for it-will you admit when things go wrong? Will you take steps to set them right?-because the difference between triumph and defeat, you'll find, isn't about willingness to take risks. It's about mastery of rescue.
Atul Gawande
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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 dont have the physical skills but because they dont have the moral skills - to practise and admit failure.
Atul Gawande
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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
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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 technologies, the best specialists, but we don't think too much about how it all comes together.
Atul Gawande
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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.
Atul Gawande
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People who reach certain levels of frailty, more important than getting their mammogram, more important than getting their blood pressure tweaked, they're at high risk of falling. If they fall and break their hip, they not only die sooner, they die miserably.
Atul Gawande
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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.
Atul Gawande