The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one's life. Atul Gawande More Quotes by Atul Gawande More Quotes From Atul Gawande Are doctors who make mistakes villains? No, because then we all are. Atul Gawande doctorsvillainmistake When we, doctors, ask patients what their priorities are if time is short, what we do is we use what is available to us - whether it's geriatric care or palliative care or hospice care - to make sure they're living the kind of life that they want to live. Atul Gawande prioritiespatientcare There are times when you have sharp elbows, and people are trying to muscle you out of certain meetings - because then people could leak to the press that you had a role in certain decisions. I, at twenty-six, was very impatient and didn't know how to keep my powder dry. I was running a team of seventy-five people when I had never been a boss. I was the worst boss ever. Atul Gawande teamrunningpeople One of the consequences of if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, is that all of us now are at risk of being a preexisting - of having a preexisting condition waiting to happen. Life, increasingly, is a preexisting condition waiting to happen, now that we have more and more of this data available. Atul Gawande riskcarewaiting Just look at the list of who the lowest-paid people are. Pediatricians are at the bottom. You would also look at internists. You would look at psychiatrists. You would look at family physicians, HIV specialists. People who take care of chronic illnesses by seeing people carefully over time, those are the people who get the least money. The people who have the most are people like orthopedic surgeons, interventional cardiologists. And my point isn't that there is something wrong with heroism. Atul Gawande heroismcarepeople The Affordable Care Act also offered protections that allow for preexisting conditions, as people know, that you're provided coverage and you can maintain steady coverage. And that's an important part of being able to stay in care and do better over the long run. Atul Gawande runninglongpeople My biggest fear, that 27 percent of Americans under 65 have an existing health condition that, without the protections of the Affordable Care Act, would mean they would - could be automatically excluded from insurance coverage. Before the ACA, they wouldn't have been able to get insurance coverage on the individual market, you know, if you're a freelancer or if you had a small business or the like. Atul Gawande protectioncaremean We now have 30 percent, for example, of Medicare patients who are seeing doctors who are rewarded for doing this kind of work, like high blood pressure control. So, the Affordable Care Act has pushed this direction down the road. Atul Gawande patientcarekind When [disease] can't be stopped, that's where we become lost. Atul Gawande diseaselost If the conversation people think is coming is the 'death panel' conversation, that's a total failure. Atul Gawande conversationpeoplethinking Writing lets you step back and think through a problem. Even the angriest rant forces the writer to achieve a degree of thoughtfulness. Atul Gawande degreeswritingthinking When I do an operation, it's half a dozen people. When it goes beautifully, it's like a symphony, with everybody playing their part. Atul Gawande symphonyhalfpeople In one study, old people assigned to a geriatrics team stayed independent for far longer, and were admitted to the hospital less. Atul Gawande independentteampeople If we took away the ability to put defibrillators in people in their last years, people would be shouting in the streets. Atul Gawande would-bepeopleyears This is the reality of intensive care: at any point, we are as apt to harm as we are to heal. Atul Gawande harmcarereality Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine. Atul Gawande expertisemodernmedicine No travel ban or quarantine will seal a country completely. Even if travel could be reduced by eighty per cent-itself a feat-models predict that new transmissions would be delayed only a few weeks. Worse, it would only drive an increase in the number of cases at the source. Health-care workers who have fallen ill would not be able to get out for treatment, and the international health personnel needed to quell the outbreak would no longer be able to go in. Atul Gawande ebolanumberscountry When we lived in a society where we had large families that lived together, especially in agricultural societies like my grandfather and father grew up in, the result is you always had family around to take care of you. Atul Gawande caretogetherfather If I became just a brain in a jar - as long as I can communicate back and forth with people, that would be okay with me. Atul Gawande brainlongpeople Outsiders tend to be the first to recognize the inadequacies of our social institutions. But, precisely because they are outsiders, they are usually in a poor position to fix them. Atul Gawande outsiderspoorfirsts