Making systems work is the ...

Making systems work is the great task of my generation of physicians and scientists. But I would go further and say that making systems work - whether in healthcare, education, climate change, making a pathway out of poverty - is the great task of our generation as a whole.
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 Atul Gawande

Quotes from the same author

If we took away the ability to put defibrillators in people in their last years, people would be shouting in the streets.
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 Atul Gawande
Developing a skill is painful, though. It is difficult. And that's part of the satisfaction. You will only find meaning in what you struggle with. What you struggle to get good at next may not seem the exact right thing for you at first. With time and effort, however, you will discover new possibilities in yourself-an ability to solve problems, for instance, or to communicate, or to create beauty.
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 Atul Gawande
You can't make a recipe for something as complicated as surgery. Instead, you can make a recipe for how to have a team that's prepared for the unexpected.
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 Atul Gawande
Go back to the '30s, '40s, '50s, and it was the discovery of heroic interventions, the ability to cure people with penicillin or do an operation to stop disease that was what saved the day. Primary care physicians couldn't do all that much that really demonstrated a difference. The people who control and work with you to control your blood pressure, they're not rewarded for doing that or to be innovative about doing that. So, the result is half of Americans have uncontrolled high blood pressure, despite seeing clinicians.
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 Atul Gawande
Just using a checklist requires [doctors] to embrace different values from ones we've had, like humility, discipline, teamwork.
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 Atul Gawande