Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
Written by Atul Gawande [more]
Preface: This is a fascinating but disquieting book. Perhaps it means more to me, the son of a surgeon, but its story is compelling to anyone who seeks excellence. Dr. Gawande dives deeply, for example, into the seemingly simple concept of diligence, which he calls "both central to performance and fiendishly hard." The book's strength, in my view, is that he takes real examples to demonstrate how his own medical experience applies to all who seek to perform well.
A favorite quote:
"Betterment is a perpetual labor. The world is chaotic, disorganized and vexing, and medicine is nowhere spared that reality. To complicate matters, we in medicine are human ourselves………The question is not whether one accepts responsibility. Just by doing this work, one has. The question is, having accepted the responsibility, how one does such work well?"
