Atul Gawande

In the end, what tormented me most was the idea that I had failed to give my daughter a good death.

Lists have been around forever, but they become a technology when they are applicable to something complicated.

Doctors need to learn how to die.

The key to success is to focus on goals, not quotas.

Uncertainty is the core of what we do.

We all know that we are going to die, but we don't want to think about it.

A checklist is a way to harness the wisdom of those who have gone before us.

Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale.

The hardest part of being a doctor is the waiting.

To be a good doctor, you have to be a good human being.

We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.

Checklists are quick and simple.

The goal is not a better death, but a good death.

In medicine, we have to learn from our mistakes.

Efforts to improve health often fail because we focus on the wrong things.

The patient is the one with the disease.

We must balance hope and reality.

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.

Doctors are trained to preserve life at all costs.

The best way to reduce errors is to make them impossible.