Better

Atul Gawande is at it again.

Better is his second book and my mother in law just gave it to me for a gift. I was sucked in from the introduction.

"What does it take to be good at something in which failure is so easy, so effortless?"

"People often look to great athletes for lessons about performance. And for a surgeon like me, athletes do indeed have lessons to teach-about the value of perseverance, of hard work and practice, of precision. But success in medicine has dimensions that cannot be found on a playing field. For one, lives are on the line. Our decisions and omissions are therefore moral in nature. We also face daunting expectations. In medicine, our task is to cope with illness and to enable every human being to lead a life as long and free of frailty as science will allow. The steps are often uncertain. The knowledge to be mastered is both vast and incomplete. Yet we are expected to act with swiftness and consistency.....We are also expected to do our work humanely, with gentleness and concern. It's not only the stakes but also the complexity of performance in medicine that makes it so interesting and at the same time so unsettling."

Complications was great as well.

Maybe because I am a surgeon about the same age, I relate very much to him and his great stories. He is able to put in to words things I have experienced many times over.

Of course he is a Macarthur award winner, and on staff at Harvard's hospital so maybe he is just a bit better than than the average bear.

Both highly recommended.