Atul Gawande Quotes

Quotes about:

• Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try.

  Atul Gawande

  Trying, Doe, Genius

  Atul Gawande (2010). “Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance”, p.246, Profile Books

  106 Copy quote

• You may not control life's circumstances, but getting to be the author of your life means getting to control what you do with them.

  Atul Gawande

  Mean, May, Circumstances

  Atul Gawande (2014). “Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End”, p.143, Profile Books

  55 Copy quote

• We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge, uncertain information, fallible individuals, and at the same time lives on the line. There is science in what we do, yes, but also habit, intuition, and sometimes plain old guessing. The gap between what we know and what we aim for persists. And this gap complicates everything we do.

  Atul Gawande

  Pain, Medicine, Intuition

  Atul Gawande (2010). “Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science”, p.7, Profile Books

  56 Copy quote

• Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance.

  Atul Gawande

  Coaching, Done, May

  34 Copy quote

• Sometimes we can offer a cure, sometimes only a salve, sometimes not even that. But whatever we can offer, our interventions, and the risks and sacrifices they entail, are justified only if they serve the larger aims of a person's life. When we forget that, the suffering we inflict can be barbaric. When we remember it the good we do can be breathtaking.

  Atul Gawande

  Sacrifice, Risk, Suffering

  Atul Gawande (2014). “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End”, p.136, Metropolitan Books

  44 Copy quote

• 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

  Team, Thinking, Medicine

  25 Copy quote

• Developing a skill is painful, though. It is difficult. And that's part of the satisfaction. You will only find meaning in what you struggle with. What you struggle to get good at next may not seem the exact right thing for you at first. With time and effort, however, you will discover new possibilities in yourself-an ability to solve problems, for instance, or to communicate, or to create beauty.

  Atul Gawande

  Struggle, Skills, Effort

  61 Copy quote

• In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments-which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves.

  Atul Gawande

  Meaningful, Pain, Sleep

  Atul Gawande (2014). “Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End”, p.162, Profile Books

  53 Copy quote

• 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

  Simple, Things In Life, Small Steps

  Atul Gawande (2010). “Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance”, p.21, Profile Books

  50 Copy quote

• Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need.

  Atul Gawande

  People, Dying, Comfort

  Atul Gawande (2014). “Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End”, p.13, Profile Books

  77 Copy quote

• 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.

  Atul Gawande

  Taken, Doctors, Perfection

  Atul Gawande (2010). “Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science”, p.74, Profile Books

  60 Copy quote

• 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

  Engineering, Risk, Brain

  35 Copy quote

• 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

  Differences, Risk, Triumph

  "Failure and Rescue" by Atul Gawande, www.newyorker.com. June 2, 2012.

  34 Copy quote

• Once you start to ask patients about their priorities, you discover what they're living for. Once you uncover that, it helps you, as a doctor, decide what to fight for. And when we do that, we often end up identifying limits to the kind of care that people want. One's assumption is that these people are going to live shorter lives, but what we're doing is protecting quality of life. In doing so, you sometimes end up helping people live longer. Certainly, you help people live better days and with more purpose in their lives.

  Atul Gawande

  Fighting, People, Priorities

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  16 Copy quote

• At times, in medicine, you feel you are inside a colossal and impossibly complex machine whose gears will turn for you only according to their own arbitrary rhythm. The notion that human caring, the effort to do better for people, might make a difference can seem hopelessly naive. But it isn't.

  Atul Gawande

  Caring, Medicine, Differences

  Atul Gawande (2010). “Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance”, p.10, Profile Books

  32 Copy quote

• The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one's life.

  Atul Gawande

  Integrity, Battle, Mortals

  Atul Gawande (2014). “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End”, p.77, Metropolitan Books

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Atul Gawande

  Motivation, Team, Inspiration

  49 Copy quote

• I said there are at least two kinds of satisfaction, however, and the other has nothing to do with skill. It comes from human connection. It comes from making others happy, understanding them, loving them.

  Atul Gawande

  Skills, Two, Understanding

  16 Copy quote

• We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still the way norms and standards change.

  Atul Gawande

  Talking, People, Way

  "Literature about medicine may be all that can save us" by Andrew Solomon, www.theguardian.com. April 22, 2016.

  14 Copy quote

• Arriving at an acceptance of one's mortality is a process, not an epiphany.

  Atul Gawande

  Acceptance, Arriving, Epiphany

  38 Copy quote

• Human interaction is the key force in overcoming resistance and speeding change.

  Atul Gawande

  Keys, Overcoming, Resistance

  "Annals of Medicine" by Atul Gawande, www.newyorker.com. July 29, 2013.

  20 Copy quote

• Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you.

  Atul Gawande

  Choices, Life Is, Relentless

  Atul Gawande (2014). “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End”, p.113, Metropolitan Books

  27 Copy quote

• I talked to over two hundred patients and family members about their experiences with aging, serious illnesses, and the big unfixables. But I also spoke with scores of physicians, and especially geriatricians, palliative care doctors, hospice nurses, and nursing home workers. The biggest thing I found was that when these clinicians were at their best, they were recognizing that people had priorities besides merely living longer. The most important and reliable way that we can understand what people's priorities are, besides just living longer, is to simply ask. And we don't ask.

  Atul Gawande

  Home, Nursing, Nurse

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Courage is strength in the face of knowledge of what is to be feared or hoped. Wisdom is prudent strength.

  Atul Gawande

  Prudent, Faces

  Atul Gawande (2014). “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End”, p.122, Metropolitan Books

  35 Copy quote

• What is needed, however, isn't just that people working together be nice to each other. It is discipline. Discipline is hard--harder than trustworthiness and skill and perhaps even than selflessness. We are by nature flawed and inconstant creatures. We can't even keep from snacking between meals. We are not built for discipline. We are built for novelty and excitement, not for careful attention to detail. Discipline is something we have to work at.

  Atul Gawande

  Nice, Skills, Discipline

  Atul Gawande (2010). “The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right”, p.183, Profile Books

  36 Copy quote

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