Saturday, October 17, 2015

Better by Gawande book review

title:surgeons-during-an-operation; taken by john crawford; source: http://www.freestockphotos.biz/
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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