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Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
Books: Text Books: Political Science: Item 1
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Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Scienceby Atul Gawande
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125 of 125 people found the following review helpful: Too Talented for the OR, November 17, 2005 Reviewer:Marc S. Libman (Brookline, MA) - Dr. Gawande's essays are thoughtful and very well written, and it blows my mind that he was able to be such a prolific writer while doing a residency (let alone a surgical residency). I read these essays one at a time originally when they appeared in the New Yorker during my pre-med and med school days, and I enjoyed rereading them recently, now that I'm a resident myself. It is always refreshing to see honesty when it comes to the imperfections of the medical profession. His stories about dealing with his own children's medical problems are very compelling, struggling with when to relinquish control to other doctors and when to step in and advocate. I also currently find myself much more interested in the cognitive science of decision making, having to make potentially life-altering decisions in a split second, balancing multiple confounding variables along with personal styles, experiences and instincts. Another topic given well deserved scrutiny is the phenomenon of physician burnout and how the profession deals with, and often fails to deal with, "good doctors gone bad." Dr. Gawande comes across as the type of person I wouldn't expect to enjoy working with the typical surgeon colleagues. In fact, I would love to see him address this topic in his future writings. It would take a writer of his skill to explore the stereotypical personalities and cultures of the different specialties. No one wants to over-generalize, but medical students from various schools will have very similar descriptions of the types of O.B. residents versus psychiatrists versus pediatricians versus orthopedists that they worked with. The broad, simplified version of this is along the lines seen on the TV show Scrubs, with surgeons being the jocks and internists being the geeks. That is too generalized but not entirely untrue. It's an interesting question, what perpetuates these sub-cultures, whether it is the type of person drawn to a specialty or whether people pick their careers based on who they want their colleagues to be. In the end, even with all the discussions of mistakes, burnout, and imperfections, I found this book to be affirming about the medical profession. Affirming both as a physician and as a sometimes patient or family member of a patient. Medicine doesn't always work like it should, and doctors should not be placed on pedestals. There are real problems in the system, but there are also plenty of very dedicated, hard-working, medical professionals doing their best to overcome those problems, working to provide the best care possible to their patients, to make the best decisions possible given the limitations of our knowledge. In times of crisis, you just have to take a deep breath and then put your faith in the system.
Product Review
Gently dismantling the myth of medical infallibility, Dr. Atul Gawande's Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science is essential reading for anyone involved in medicine--on either end of the stethoscope. medical professionals make mistakes, learn on the job, and improvise much of their technique and self-confidence. Gawande's tales are humane and passionate reminders that doctors are people, too. His prose is thoughtful and deeply engaging, shifting from sometimes painful stories of suffering patients (including his own child) to intriguing suggestions for improving medicine with the same care he expresses in the surgical theater. Some of his ideas will make health care providers nervous or even angry, but his disarming style, confessional tone, and thoughtful arguments should win over most readers. Complications is a book with heart and an excellent bedside manner, celebrating rather than berating doctors for being merely human. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Medicine reveals itself as a fascinatingly complex and "fundamentally human endeavor" in this distinguished debut essay collection by a surgical resident and staff writer for the New Yorker. Gawande, a former Rhodes scholar and Harvard medical School graduate, illuminates "the moments in which medicine actually happens," and describes his profession as an "enterprise of constantly changing knowledge, uncertain information, fallible individuals, and at the same time lives on the line." Gawande's background in philosophy and ethics is evident throughout these pieces, which range from edgy accounts of medical traumas to sobering analyses of doctors' anxieties and burnout. With humor, sensitivity and critical intelligence, he explores the pros and cons of new technologies, including a controversial factory model for routine surgeries that delivers superior success rates while dramatically cutting costs. He also describes treatment of such challenging conditions as morbid obesity, chronic pain and necrotizing fasciitis the often-fatal condition caused by dreaded "flesh-eating bacteria" and probes the agonizing process by which physicians balance knowledge and intuition to make seemingly impossible decisions. What draws practitioners to this challenging profession, he concludes, is the promise of "the alterable moment the fragile but crystalline opportunity for one's know-how, ability or just gut instinct to change the course of another's life for the better." These exquisitely crafted essays, in which medical subjects segue into explorations of much larger themes, place Gawande among the best in the field. National author tour.
Copyright 2002 Cahners business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.Shop Bookstores:
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