302 Quotes by Atul Gawande

Steps to become a positive deviant:1. Ask unscripted questions2. Don't complain3. Count something that interests you4. Write something... Anything5. Change yourself. Change something

The seemingly easiest and most sensible rule for a doctor to follow is: Always Fight. Always look for what more you could do.

The seemingly easiest and most sensible rule for a doctor to follow is: Always Fight. Always look for what more you could do. (...) But our fight is not always to do more. It is to do right by our patients, even though what is right is not always clear.

Endings matter, not just for the person but, perhaps even more, for the ones left behind.

Our reverence for independence takes no account of the reality of what happens in life: sooner or later, independence will become impossible. Serious illness or infirmity will strike. It is as inevitable as sunset. And then a new question arises: If independence is what we live for, what do we do when it can no longer be sustained?

With a DO-CONFIRM checklist, he said, team members perform their jobs from memory and experience, often separately. But then they stop. They pause to run the checklist and confirm that everything that was supposed to be done was done. With a READ-DO checklist, on the other hand, people carry out the tasks as they check them off--it's more like a recipe.

Our responsibility, in medicine, is to deal with human beings as they are. People die only once. They have no experience to draw on. They need doctors and nurses who are willing to have the hard discussions and say what they have seen, who will help people prepare for what is to come--and escape a warehoused oblivion that few really want.

Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?

We recruit for attitude and train for skill,