The medical writing for which [Atul] Gawande is best known represents only a small fraction of his professional output. He is a surgeon, and a busy one at that, performing 250-plus operations a year. He is a professor at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). He heads a World Health Organization initiative on making surgery safer. And he is a husband and a father of three…..
Across his portfolio of pursuits, Gawande displays a willingness to be influenced by people he respects, and to recognize good ideas when he finds them. He says he would not have gotten a public-health degree had Zinner not suggested it. The policy concept perhaps most closely associated with his name, the surgical checklist, was not his to start with, as he readily admits (see “A Checklist for Life”).
Perhaps this is why he is reluctant to describe his own writing style, saying instead that he “steals” from such writers as Hemingway and Tolstoy. But there is what Finder calls a “Gawandean” style: “He understands how the small, colorful details can bring an argument to life. He’s always very attendant to rhythms and sonorities.”
I cannot recommend highly enough the writings of Dr. Gawande. I am a physician and I respect the majority of my colleagues for their intent to serve and to heal. However, Dr. Gawande is a far better scientist than the majority of physicians (absolutely including me): He sees the ways in which we harm whilst thinking we’re helping. He is not alone in this – but he may be the most articulate in his writing, reaching both the physician and the patient. The rest of us are blinded by the individualities of our practices and our patients, unwilling to look at system flaws and to see ourselves as components in those systems and flaws. Read his work – easy reading and well worth it. He is helping change western medicine – a shame it is such a slow process.