Quotes About Risk

The average doctor in a high-risk practice like surgery or obstetrics is sued about once every six years. Seventy percent of the time, the suit is either dropped by the plaintiff or won by the doctor in court. But the cost of defense is high, and when doctors lose, the average jury verdict is half a million dollars. General

Errors are too common and widespread to be explained so simply.

All involve risk, uncertainty, and complexity — and therefore steps that are worth committing to a checklist and testing in routine care. Good checklists could become as important as doctors and nurses as good stethoscopes (which, unlike checklist, have never been proved to make a difference in patient care). The hard question — still unanswered — is whether medical culture can seize the opportunity.

life designed to be safe but empty of anything they care about.

because of the previous damage, it couldn't safely be done.

and he couldn't endure the prospect of a longer operation.

Had they stayed just a few seconds longer, they would have plunged into the fire themselves.

The single most serious threat she faced was not the lung nodule or the back pain. It was falling. Each year, about 350,000 Americans fall and break a hip. Of those, 40 percent end up in a nursing home, and 20 percent are never able to walk again. The three primary risk factors for falling are poor balance, taking more than four prescription medications, and muscle weakness.

Most surgeons are sued at least once in the course of their careers. Studies

Research has found that loss of bone density may be an even better predictor of death from atherosclerotic disease than cholesterol levels.

And a patient's likelihood of winning a suit depended primarily on how poor his or her outcome was, regardless of whether that outcome was caused by disease or unavoidable risks of care.

We had no backup plan should disaster have occurred.

Mostly, the experiments did more harm than good.

I would have gone through with it even if they told me there was a fifty percent chance of death.

The doctors were often not recognized to be dangerous until they had done considerable damage.

Once again, the salient risk factors seem to be social rather than physical.

He warned them at length about how terrible the risks were and how limited the potential benefit.

Above all, it was clear that he wanted to live. He would take any risk—even death—to live.

Even with the simplest operation, it cannot be taken for granted that a patient will come through better off—or even alive.

The risk of a fatal car crash with a driver who's eighty-five or older is more than three times higher than it is with a teenage driver. The very old are the highest-risk drivers on the road

Each year, about 350,000 Americans fall and break a hip. Of those, 40 percent end up in a nursing home, and 20 percent are never able to walk again. The three primary risk factors for falling are poor balance, taking more than four prescription medications, and muscle weakness. Elderly people without these risk factors have a 12 percent chance of falling in a year. Those with all three risk factors have almost a 100 percent chance.

Maybe that is all any bravery is, a stronger fear of not being brave.

Don't make waves is good advice from a leaky boat.

Delay is a gun pointed at the temple of confidence.