Better : A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

Better : A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
ISBN: 9780312427658
Publication Date: 22 January 2008

National Bestseller The struggle to perform well is universal: each of us faces fatigue, limited resources, and imperfect abilities in whatever we do. But nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine, where lives may be on the line with any decision. Atul Gawande, the "New York Times" bestselling author of Complications, examines, in riveting accounts of medical failure and triumph, how success is achieved in this complex and risk-filled profession. At once unflinching and compassionate, "Better" is an exhilarating journey, narrated by "arguably the best nonfiction doctor-writer around" ("Salon.com"). Atul Gawande, a MacArthur fellow, is a general surgeon at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for "The New Yorker," an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. His first book "Complications," was a "New York Times" bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award. Gawande lives with his wife and three children in Newton, Massachusetts. The struggle to perform well is universal: each one of us faces fatigue, limited resources, and imperfect abilities in whatever we do. But nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine, where lives are on the line with every decision. In his new book, Atul Gawande explores how doctors strive to close the gap between best intentions and best performance in the face of obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable.
Gawande's gripping stories of diligence, ingenuity, and what it means to do right by people take us to battlefield surgical tents in Iraq, labor and delivery rooms in Boston, a polio outbreak in India, and malpractice courtrooms around the country. He discusses the ethical dilemmas of doctors' participation in lethal injections, examines the influence of money o...