Quotes by Atul Gawande

“People seemed to have two different selvesan experiencing self who endures every moment equally and a remembering self who gives almost all the weight of judgment afterward to two single points in ...”

“Just ticking boxes is not the ultimate goal here. Embracing a culture of teamwork and discipline is. And if we recognised the opportunity, the two-minute WHO checklist is just a start.”

“No matter what measures are taken, doctors will sometimes falter, and it isn't reasonable to ask that we achieve perfection. What is reasonable is to ask that we never cease to aim for it.”

“In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its momentswhich, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story...”

“All involve risk, uncertainty, and complexity and therefore steps that are worth committing to a checklist and testing in routine care. Good checklists could become as important as doctors and nur...”

“We are all plagued by failures - by missed subtleties, overlooked knowledge, and outright errors. For the most part, we have imagined that little can be done beyond working harder and harder to cat...”

“Instead they choose to accept their fallibilities. They recognised the simplicity and power of using a checklist.”

“We recruit for attitude and train for skill,”

“One American in seven has no coverage, and one in three younger than sixty-five will lose coverage at some point in the next two years. These are people who aren't poor or old enough to qualify for...”

“People underestimate the importance of dilligence as a virtue. No doubt it has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is defined as "the constant and earnest effort to accomplish w...”

“You dont have to spend much time with the elderly or those with terminal illness to see how often medicine fails the people it is supposed to help. The waning days of our lives are given over to tr...”

“I am in a profession that has succeeded because of its ability to fix. If your problem is fixable, we know just what to do. But if its not? The fact that we have had no adequate answers to this que...”

“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 t...”

“We are besieged by simple problems.... Checklists can provide protection”

“All the same I fear what happens when we expand the terrain of medical practice to include actively assisting people with speeding their death. I am less worried about the abuse of these powers tha...”

“Technological society has forgotten what scholars call the 'dying role' and its importance to people as life approaches its end. People want to share memories, pass on wisdoms and keepsakes, settle...”

“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 you...”

“In 2008, the national Coping with Cancer project published a study showing that terminally ill cancer patients who were put on a mechanical ventilator, given electrical defibrillation or chest comp...”

“A study led by the Harvard researcher Nicholas Christakis asked the doctors of almost five hundred terminally ill patients to estimate how long they thought their patient would survive, and then fo...”

“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.”