Better

A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

Hardcover, 273 pages

English language

Published April 3, 2007 by Metropolitan Books.

ISBN:
978-0-8050-8211-1
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OCLC Number:
74569617

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4 stars (17 reviews)

Explores the efforts of physicians to close the gap between best intentions and best performance in the face of insurmountable obstacles, discussing such topics as the ethical considerations of lethal injections, malpractice, and surgical errors.

5 editions

fascinating discussion on improving surgical practices, possibly applicable to fields (including software, I'm not kidding)

5 stars

I read the author's Pulitzer Prize winning book Being Mortal and found this work similarly fascinating, and probably with lessons applicable to other fields on how to systematically improve practices. Of course the stakes are high in medicine, in particular, surgery, so the message is more compelling delivered with the author's humility and honest self-doubt (not something you often see doctors express).

Review of 'Better' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Gawande is an excellent writer with no shortage of stories in a highly respected field. I've enjoyed two of his other books before this and have another in the queue.

Better covers three core requirements for success in medicine: ingenuity, doing right, and diligence. These core requirements are the framework to Gawande's stories, but a minor gripe is that I felt they were too loosely correlated. I often forgot which requirement we were discussing during his lengthy stories on where he stands on c-sections, malpractice lawsuits, or capital punishment. He seemed adamant about getting an ethical point across, and I would forget how or why we were talking about them in the first place. It was great to see foreshadowing for The Checklist Manifesto in here, which he published two years later. Gawande is already praising the power of systems in Better, saying "Success requires making a hundred small steps …

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Subjects

  • Essays
  • Health Care Issues
  • Medical / Essays
  • Medical
  • Medical / Nursing
  • Case studies
  • Internal medicine
  • Medicine
  • Miscellanea