Surgeon Atul Gawande
has also a fine penmanship. After reading his book on when things go awry in
medicine, Complications, I was eager for
more and immediately began reading his
next book, Better.
Better is the inside view on how doctors, and
medicine as a whole, tries, and often succeeds in getting better results: less deaths per
thousand cases, more with less, new approaches to old problems.
Despite its engaging
stories, Better is not a mere continuation of Complications. It has more insight and
footholds on which our minds can work upon making it a companion of
sorts to Talent is Overrated of which we
talked last time. Probably one of the
greatest interest for us, lay readers, is how we ourselves can get better at
our own particular endeavors by looking at a generally veiled field, that of medicine, which not
only relies on performance but which has lives on the line as well.
Besides the
performance and ingenuity sections there is also one on doing right which
explores the ways how doctors not only have
to perform well, but also do what is right simultaneously, which can and
do conflict with one another. Nudity,
negligence and malpractice, insurance companies and compensation are explored
here.
Gawande has two more
books to his credit, The Checklist Manifesto
and Being Mortal.
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