Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science - Softcover

Gawande, Atul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312421702 ISBN 13: 9780312421700

Publisher: Metropolitan Books, 2003

Synopsis

Drawing from compelling true accounts of patients and doctors, a provocative examination of the power and limits of modern medicine reveals a world where science is uncertain, information is limited, and deadly mistakes occur. Reprint. 75,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Atul Gawande is the author of several bestselling books: Complications, a finalist for the National Book Award; Better; The Checklist Manifesto, and Being Mortal. He is also a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. He has won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science, a MacArthur Fellowship, and two National Magazine Awards. In his work in public health, he is Founder and Chair of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally. He is also chair of Haven, where he was CEO from 2018-2020. He and his wife have three children and live in Newton, Massachusetts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Complications

A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect ScienceBy Atul Gawande

Picador USA

Copyright ©2002 Atul Gawande
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780312421700
When you are in the operating room for the first time and see the surgeon press his scalpel to someone's body, you either shudder in horror or gape in awe. I gaped. It wasn't the blood and guts that enthralled me. It was the idea that a mere person would ever have the confidence to wield that scalpel. I wondered how the surgeon knew that all the steps would go as planned, that bleeding would be controlled and organs would not be injured. He didn't, but still he cut.

Later, I was allowed to make an incision myself. The surgeon drew a six-inch dotted line across the patient's abdomen and then, to my surprise, had the nurse hand me the knife. It was, I remember, still warm. I put the blade to the skin and cut. The experience was odd and addictive, mixing exhilaration, anxiety, a righteous faith that operating was somehow beneficial, and the slightly nauseating discovery that it took more force than I realized. The moment made me want to be a surgeon -- someone with the assurance to proceed as if cutting were routine.




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Excerpted from Complicationsby Atul Gawande Copyright ©2002 by Atul Gawande. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Metropolitan Books
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312421702
• ISBN 13: 9780312421700
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288