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From Amazon
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 the
Hardcover
edition.
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 the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent,
By A Customer
This review is from: Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science (Hardcover)
This book was on my "suggested" reading list for my first year of medical school. I was dreading this list, so I started with this book first. I was extremely surprised to find this book easy to read, entertaining, and enlightening. I managed to read it in less than a day, and it left me with many impression on what to really expect when I undergo my training as a physician and beyond when I am really going to be expected to be a machine.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scrupulous honesty and self-criticism: some genuine insights,
By
This review is from: Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science (Paperback)
I've enjoyed Gawande's work with The New Yorker for a number of years - his subject material is fascinating, and his honesty is compelling. As always, he makes his way to the heart of the matter - the fallibility of highly skilled physicians and why everyone pretends this isn't so - in an elegant spiral that takes us through numerous case studies. The case study approach seems to have an inherent fascination (at least it does for me), and Gawande puts this model to excellent use.What I find remarkable, among other things, is that Gawande doesn't sacrifice his own honesty for the sake of a clear conclusion. What happens to the woman with "The Red Leg" leaves us in a quandary - the decision tree said not to investigate further, Gawande's own instinct was heavily influenced by the sheer chance that he had seen a similar case recently, so what are we left with? Is it just sheer chance? We may not want to think so, but the book ends with marvelous ambiguity.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lecture agréable,
By Maxime Gosselin (Québec, Canadan) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science (Paperback)
Ce livre discute de biens des aspects de la pratique médicale courante.De nombreux exemples concrets sont expliqués et permettent de bien saisir la dimension humaine de la vie d'un médecine. Le langage est accessible au grand public. Les enjeux portent à réfléchir des attentes et mettent en perspective des situations souvent mal présentées dans les médias. Une lecture d'été qui est un must pour tout professionnel de la santé ou citoyen intéressé.
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