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highly recommended |
Awesome 
I really enjoyed this book and found it both interesting and helpful as I look for quality in my work and in my life.
Insightful and Honest
This is a followup to his first book which I thoroughly enjoyed. The first one was written with honesty and hindsight of a MD in training. It spoke frankly about his feelings and problems he encountered. This one contains the same honesty. I purchased this book for my son who will be graduating soon from a PA program. I'm sure it will be beneficial to him. I, also, enjoyed it very much.
Right on!
This book gets it right. I started the book yesterday and finished it tonight. A very well-written look at the medical system, in all its pain, humanity, glory, and struggle. If you want to understand the medical system, I recommend this book, Hospital Survival:Lessons Learned in Medical Training by Grant Cooper, and How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman. Speaking as someone who has been on multiple sides of the medical system, these are the books that speak the truth and give the accurate (and entertaining) behnd the scenes picture.
fascinating exploration of past and present improvements in medicine from behavioral innovation rather than scientific discovery 
Gawanda is a surgeon and a skilled writer. This collection of essays explores the ways in which changes in medical behavior and organization (as opposed to new scientific discoveries) can lead to drastic improvements in health and survival. He explores a broad array of applications, from interminable efforts to eliminate polio in India and elsewhere to impressive innovations in front-line war medicine in Iraq to ways that hospitals have tried to get doctors to ... wash their hands. Even though many of the essays were previously published (in the New Yorker), Gawanda has updated them and integrated them into the broader theme of the book.
Some of the essays stray from that theme, such as the one discussing medical malpractice, but each one is engaging. Gawanda is excellent at writing for a lay audience: I have no medical training and found the book completely accessible.
One of the principal messages, introduced early and revisited often, is that of "positive deviance": the idea that wonderful changes come from identifying (and learning from) individuals who deviate from norms and achieve impressive results. In his conclusion, Gawanda gives some ideas for becoming a positive deviant in medicine and in life. One is to "count something," building on the book's examples in which measurement systems led to drastic improvements in performance: one example is the Apgar score for newborns; another is the publication of cystic fibrosis treatment performance across hospitals around the country. Gawanda goes on to give a compelling example of how his own measurement helped him understand how to reduce sponges getting left inside patients.
The audiobook published by Sound Library consists of 6 CDs (about 7 hours and 30 minutes). It has good, engaging narration by John Bedford Lloyd.
reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, page 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
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