You want to ensure people can do it right 99 percent of time. When we have to fire one of our surgical trainees, it is never because they don't have the physical skills but because they don't have the moral skills - to practise and admit failure.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of moral integrity and the ability to acknowledge mistakes in the surgical profession.
Atul Gawande expresses that while technical proficiency is crucial for surgical trainees, it is their moral courage and willingness to recognize and learn from failures that truly define their capabilities as future surgeons. This highlights a vital aspect of education and training in medicine, underscoring that success is not solely about skill but also about character and ethical responsibility.
In practice
In a medical training seminar, you can use this quote to discuss the importance of ethical conduct in surgery.
A failure often does not have to be a failure at all. However, you have to be ready for it-will you admit when things go wrong? Will you take steps to set them right?-because the difference between triumph and defeat, you'll find, isn't about willingness to take risks. It's about mastery of rescue.
No one teaches you how to think about money in medical school or residency. Yet, from the moment you start practicing, you must think about it. You must consider what is covered for a patient and what is not.
Just using a checklist requires [doctors] to embrace different values from ones we've had, like humility, discipline, teamwork.
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.
At times, in medicine, you feel you are inside a colossal and impossibly complex machine whose gears will turn for you only according to their own arbitrary rhythm. The notion that human caring, the effort to do better for people, might make a difference can seem hopelessly naive. But it isn't.
We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge, uncertain information, fallible individuals, and at the same time lives on the line. There is science in what we do, yes, but also habit, intuition, and sometimes plain old guessing. The gap between what we know and what we aim for persists. And this gap complicates everything we do.
The quality of your public education shouldn't be defined by your zip code.
I recall being fascinated by numbers even at age three and viewed their manipulation as a kind of game.
We have to teach our boys the rules of equality and respect, so that as they grow up gender equality becomes a natural way of life. And we have to teach our girls that they can reach as high as humanly possible.
I'm very passionate about political issues, but I also think that listening to people who disagree is extremely important, and I try to build that into my teaching, sometimes by co-teaching with rightwing colleagues.
I love writing about my job because I loved it, and it was a particularly interesting one when I was a young man. It was like holidays with pay to me.
I am moreover inclined to be concise when I reflect on the constant occupation of the citizens in public and private affairs, so that in their few leisure moments they may read and understand as much as possible.
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