Atul Gawande

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew; let us mindfully appreciate its transience.

The line between life and death is not as clear as we would like.

We achieve the best outcomes when we listen to the patient.

In surgery, as in anything else, skill and confidence are built slowly and steadily.

A good checklist is precise, efficient, and easy to use even in the moment of crisis.

Aging is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.

Medicine's ground state is uncertainty. And wisdom for physicians, their strongest asset, consists in moving forth from this position with as much equanimity as possible.

We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science, an art of probability and chance.

The team's cohesion and the trust they have in one another are extraordinary.

Dying in the modern medical system is something we can delay, but we can't escape.

Efforts to reduce errors tend to be derided as mere "common sense."

What is medicine? It's a profession of human service.

We must learn to accept the end when it comes.

Checklists are, after all, a technology.

Patients want to know they are being cared for by humans, not machines.

Surgery is the most human of endeavors.

Autonomy is what nurses define as nursing.

Improvement comes from diligence.

The volume of medical knowledge has expanded enormously.

We need to ask ourselves: What does it mean to be a good doctor?