Quotes from Atul Gawande

people who don't know one another's names don't work together nearly as well as those who do.

We had no backup plan should disaster have occurred.

At most, a doctor might say, "I'm sorry that things didn't go as well as we had hoped.

Block has a list of questions that she aims to cover with sick patients in the time before decisions have to be made: What do they understand their prognosis to be, what are their concerns about what lies ahead, what kinds of trade-offs are they willing to make, how do they want to spend their time if their health worsens, who do they want to make decisions if they can't?

The notion isn't as absurd as it sounds.

The key word in her mind was home. Home is the one place where your own priorities hold sway. At home, you decide how you spend your time, how you share your space, and how you manage your possessions. Away from home, you don't. This loss of freedom was what people like Lou Sanders and Wilson's mother, Jessie, dreaded. Wilson

People may hate being embarrassed and strive not to show it when they are, but embarrassment serves an important good.

The checklist cannot be lengthy. A rule of thumb some use is to keep it to between five and nine items, which is the limit of working memory.

But scientific advances have turned the processes of aging and dying into medical experiences

I was learning. In medicine, we have long faced a conflict between the imperative to give patients the best possible care and the need to provide novices with experience. Residencies attempt to mitigate potential harm through supervision and graduated responsibility. And there is reason to think patients actually

The front row is occupied by the most senior surgeons:

And he let me go ahead.

percent of medical students take no course in geriatrics

In the face of the unknown—the always nagging uncertainty about whether, under complex circumstances, things will really be okay—

And if blushing serves to heighten such sensitivity, this may be to one's ultimate advantage.

People seemed to have two different selves--an experiencing self who endures every moment equally and a remembering self who gives almost all the weight of judgment afterward to two single points in time, the worst moment and the last one.

AT THE CENTER of Wilson's work was an attempt to solve a deceptively simple puzzle: what makes life worth living when we are old and frail and unable to care for ourselves?

In other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm on patients rather than confronting the subject of mortality. If end-of-life discussions were an experimental drug, the FDA would approve it.

DECLINE REMAINS OUR fate; death will someday come.

To maintain the same volume of blood flow through our narrowed and stiffened blood vessels, the heart has to generate increased pressure. As a result, more than half of us develop hypertension by the age of sixty-five.

they have been constructive and engaged and have held nothing against me.

It is common to misconceive how checklists function in complex lines of work. They are not comprehensive how-to guides, whether for building a skyscraper or getting a plane out of trouble. They are quick and simple tools aimed to buttress the skills of expert professionals. And

he had to give up the firm to his partners.

Embarrassment causes blushing, and blushing causes embarrassment—so what makes the cycle stop?