A smooth reading of a well written insider's view of today's medicine. A topic I found interesting was Morbidity and Mortality (M&M), regularly scheduled meetings where doctors take personal responsibility by discussing what they could or should have done differently.

Actually Gawande explains that perfection takes practice and the 'constant relearning of new techniques and technologies' and the result is that residents get practice and doctors get information but no practice. We always hear the joke that doctors are 'only practicing' when things go wrong. In three sections named Fallibility, Mystery, and Uncertainty, Gawande describes the education of surgeons, advancements in medicine, difficult diagnoses, and some fascinating (and disturbing) cases. After being on dialysis, having a kidney transplant, and a few minor surgeries in the last few years, I appreciated the explanations of things I had experienced but not understood.

Both seemed acceptable but I decided on Robert Petkoff before realizing he reads the unabridged book which was what I wanted anyway. Audible lets you listen to a bit of each version before deciding which reader you prefer. Gawande offers a richly detailed portrait of the people and the science, even as he tackles the paradoxes and imperfections inherent in caring for human lives.Īt once tough-minded and humane, Complications is a new kind of medical writing, nuanced and lucid, unafraid to confront the conflicts and uncertainties that lie at the heart of modern medicine, yet always alive to the possibilities of wisdom in this extraordinary endeavor.Ĭomplications was a 2002 National Book Award finalist for nonfiction.Ī Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and CompanyĬomplications was re-recorded in 2020 in abridged and unabridged format with two different narrators.

He also shows us what happens when medicine comes up against the inexplicable: an architect with incapacitating back pain for which there is no physical cause a young woman with nausea that won't go away a television newscaster whose blushing is so severe that she cannot do her job. In dramatic and revealing stories of patients and doctors, he explores how deadly mistakes occur and why good surgeons go bad. This audio is exploratory surgery on medicine itself, laying bare a science not in its idealized form, but as it actually is - complicated, perplexing, and profoundly human.Ītul Gawande offers an unflinching view from the scalpel's edge, where science is ambiguous, information is limited, the stakes are high, yet decisions must be made. Sometimes in medicine the only way to know what is truly going on in a patient is to operate, to look inside with one's own eyes. A brilliant and courageous doctor reveals, in gripping accounts of true cases, the power and limits of modern medicine.

Complications atul