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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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Atul Gawande
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: May 11
Journalist
Medical Writer
Professor
Researcher
Surgeon
Brooklyn
New York
Atul A Gawande
Atul Gawande
Every
Turn
Basic
Productivity
Brain
Field
Aviation
Quality
Tools
Gaps
High
Fields
Engineering
Checklists
Turns
Revolution
Brains
Simplistic
Help
Among
Construction
Lowly
Helping
Seem
Complexity
Combining
Seems
Risk
Fill
Virtually

More quotes by Atul Gawande

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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.
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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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Arriving at an acceptance of one's mortality is a process, not an epiphany.
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Human interaction is the key force in overcoming resistance and speeding change.
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Are doctors who make mistakes villains? No, because then we all are.
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We have medicalized aging, and that experiment is failing us.
Atul Gawande
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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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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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Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance.
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Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine.
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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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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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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 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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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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We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still the way norms and standards change.
Atul Gawande
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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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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