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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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Atul Gawande
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: May 11
Journalist
Medical Writer
Professor
Researcher
Surgeon
Brooklyn
New York
Atul A Gawande
Atul Gawande
Mortality
Medical
Learned
Wasn
School
Things

More quotes by Atul Gawande

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Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine.
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We have medicalized aging, and that experiment is failing us.
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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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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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Man is fallible, but maybe men are less so.
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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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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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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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This was not guilt: guilt is what you feel when you have done something wrong. What I felt was shame: I was what was wrong.
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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 yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still the way norms and standards change.
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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.
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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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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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Making systems work is the great task of my generation of physicians and scientists. But I would go further and say that making systems work - whether in healthcare, education, climate change, making a pathway out of poverty - is the great task of our generation as a whole.
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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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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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.
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Human interaction is the key force in overcoming resistance and speeding change.
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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.
Atul Gawande