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Arriving at an acceptance of one's mortality is a process, not an epiphany.

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
Epiphany
Arriving
Mortality
Acceptance
Process

More quotes by 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.
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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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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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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.
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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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We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still the way norms and standards change.
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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.
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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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Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you.
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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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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.
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Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine.
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Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance.
Atul Gawande
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Human interaction is the key force in overcoming resistance and speeding change.
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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.
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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.
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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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We recruit for attitude and train for skill.
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We have medicalized aging, and that experiment is failing us.
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Man is fallible, but maybe men are less so.
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