Quotes by Atul Gawande

About Atul Gawande:

Atul Gawande is an American surgeon, author, and public health researcher. He is a general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, professor in both the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. In his work in public health, he is Executive Director of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation and also chairman of Lifebox, a nonprofit reducing deaths in surgery globally.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

No one teaches you how to think about money in medical school or residency. Yet, from the moment you start practicing, you must think about it. You must consider what is covered for a patient and what is not.

Atul Gawande

Oliver Sacks remains my hero to this day. He was one of the first medical writers I read. The other was Lewis Thomas, who is no longer alive but is just heroic to me.

Atul Gawande

People say that the most expensive piece of medical equipment is the doctor's pen. It's not that we make all the money. It's that we order all the money.

Atul Gawande

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

I think we are faced in medicine with the reality that we have to be willing to talk about our failures and think hard about them, even despite the malpractice system. I mean, there are things that we can do to make that system better.

Atul Gawande

No one looks at your hands to see how much they shake when you are interviewed to be a surgeon. The physical skills required are no greater than for writing cursive script. If an operation requires so much skill only a few surgeons can do it, you mod...

Atul Gawande

If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, my patients will not even be postponed. Another surgeon would step in and take over. The reason to do research and writing is that it at least makes me feel not entirely replaceable. If I didn't write, I don't know if ...

Atul Gawande

Outsiders tend to be the first to recognize the inadequacies of our social institutions. But, precisely because they are outsiders, they are usually in a poor position to fix them.

Atul Gawande

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 ...

Atul Gawande

Human beings are social creatures. We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in the obvious sense that we each depend on others. We are social in a more elemental way: simply to exist as a normal human being requi...

Atul Gawande

The damage that the human body can survive these days is as awesome as it is horrible: crushing, burning, bombing, a burst blood vessel in the brain, a ruptured colon, a massive heart attack, rampaging infection. These conditions had once been unifor...

Atul Gawande

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

Atul Gawande

Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine.

Atul Gawande

I was never born to write. I was taught to write. And I am still being taught to write.

Atul Gawande

When I do an operation, it's half a dozen people. When it goes beautifully, it's like a symphony, with everybody playing their part.

Atul Gawande

My vantage point on the world is the operating room where I see my patients.

Atul Gawande

George Orwell is a pinnacle writer, for his combination of moral insight and literary writing.

Atul Gawande

There are, in human affairs, two kinds of problems: those which are amenable to a technical solution and those which are not. Universal health-care coverage belongs to the first category: you can pick one of several possible solutions, pass a bill, a...

Atul Gawande

We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love. That remains the main problem and paradox for the frail. Many of the things that we want for those we care about are things that we would adamantly oppose for ourselves because they would i...

Atul Gawande

Few societies have come to grips with the new demography. We cling to the notion of retirement at sixty-five - a reasonable notion when those over sixty-five were a tiny percentage of the population but increasingly untenable as they approach 20 perc...

Atul Gawande

Author Bio

  • NameAtul Gawande
  • Descriptionmedical doctor and author
  • BornNovember 5, 1965
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPhysician; Medical Writer
  • WorksThe Checklist Manifesto
  • AwardsMacArthur Fellows Program