Quote

This is the reality of intensive care: at any point, we are as apt to harm as we are to heal.

Atul Gawande

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Atul Gawande
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: May 11
Journalist
Medical Writer
Professor
Researcher
Surgeon
Brooklyn
New York
Atul A Gawande
Atul Gawande
Point
Reality
Care
Intensive
Heal
Harm

More quotes by Atul Gawande

Image
Are doctors who make mistakes villains? No, because then we all are.
Atul Gawande
Image
Man is fallible, but maybe men are less so.
Atul Gawande
Image
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
Image
Human interaction is the key force in overcoming resistance and speeding change.
Atul Gawande
Image
What about regular professionals, who just want to do what they do as well as they can?
Atul Gawande
Image
Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you.
Atul Gawande
Image
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
Image
One of the consequences of if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, is that all of us now are at risk of being a preexisting - of having a preexisting condition waiting to happen.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
Image
We have medicalized aging, and that experiment is failing us.
Atul Gawande
Image
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
Image
Arriving at an acceptance of one's mortality is a process, not an epiphany.
Atul Gawande
Image
I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn't one of them.
Atul Gawande
Image
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
Image
We recruit for attitude and train for skill.
Atul Gawande
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Writing lets you step back and think through a problem. Even the angriest rant forces the writer to achieve a degree of thoughtfulness.
Atul Gawande
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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