Members with This Book
Most Helpful Reviews
see all reviews
Liked It1 of 1 members found this review helpful “I am a physician and have recommended this book to the medical executive committee at our hospital and to my book club (most of whom are not in medicine). It was actually recommended to me by the infectious disease person at our hospital (hmmm, I wonder if it was the chapter on handwashing?) I...” see full review » see other reviews » |
Didn’t Like It “This book is unlike anything i would ever read. It was full of facts. Every moment he was pounding information into your mind. I did learn a lot though. I'm going to be honest. I disliked this book.” see full review » see other reviews » |
Newest Reviews
see all reviews-
“ Don't know yet but I'm prepared to be mildly creeped out.”
Esther R wrote this review 10 days ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Gawande is a very compelling writer. He describes the dilemmas doctors face when reconciling the best care they know how to provide, their limitations as doctors and human beings, and the needs and wants of their patients.
John N wrote this review 3 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
He uses case histories to illustrate a particular problem and the alternative solutions that doctors have tried. Gawande is honest about his own accomplishments and failures as a doctor. For me, this gives the stories he tells even more immediacy and poignancy.”
“Better - A surgeon’s notes on performance. co2007. 250pages. Read June 2008.”
Peter C wrote this review 3 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Another very readable medical non-fiction book by Dr. Gawande. The book is divided into three main sections - Diligence, Doing Right, and Ingenuity. Chapters within each section offer fascinatiing insights into such things as washing hands, the casualities of war, physcians who participate in the death penalty, malpractice and more. ”
Diane L wrote this review Friday, November 13 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“Gawande, Atul. Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance. New York: Picador, 2007.
Han N wrote this review Monday, November 2 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Better than I thought it would be, Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande, is a surprising book that I found to be not only understandable but also enjoyable. At first, I was skeptical of reading a book about doctors and medicine. I only know the very basics of helath, why would I like this book? But I ended up liking it a lot; it was entertaining and very comprehendible. Gawande does a terrific job of blending medicinal knowledge with stories about real people in a way that makes it easy for most anyone to understand. I could even relate to parts of it.
Gawande is a doctor in his everyday life. He has written and published only one other book, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and both it and Better are New York Times Bestsellers. Both these books are not about imagination or an interesting plot, but they are about his life, his experiences, and his opinions. Now, they are not just about him and his life, he also does research and finds out more about other people’s lives. He interviews fellow doctors and tells us about their experiences too. These books are about any doctor’s life. What they face, what they learn, who they meet, why things happen, and how it changes them. He experiences all of these things first-hand and records them in this book.
This book is also different from others because of the way it is organized. It consists of three parts: Diligence, Doing Right, and Ingenuity. Each part then consists of different chapters.
For example, one chapter in this book in the part about diligence is dedicated to the idea of washing hands and its evolution in his hospital. “One ordinary December day, I took a tour of my hospital with Deborah Yokoe, an infectious disease specialist, and Susan Marino, a microbiologist…Their full-time job, and that of three others in the unit, is to stop the spread of infection in the hospital…their greatest difficulty is getting clinicians like me to do the one thing that consistently halts the spread of infections: wash our hands” (13-14). The doctors and nurses simply don’t have time to wash their hands after seeing every patient. So, Yokoe and Marino had to work to find a solution, and they did. “Less irritating than soap, alcohol rinses and gels … have only recently caught on in the United States. They take far less time to use-only about fifteen seconds or so to rub a gel over the hands and fingers and let it air-dry. Dispensers can be put at the bedside more easily than a sink. And at alcohol concentrations of 50 to 95 percent, they are more effective at killing organisms, too” (18). In this part of the book, he is not talking about his struggles as a doctor, but about the struggles of Doctors Yokoe and Marino. They have a mission just like he does, but they have a different one.
Doctors everywhere have a similar yet different mission, and Gawande explores this idea by talking about doctors from everywhere around the world throughout the book, including doctors in poor districts of India. “On rounds in Nanded with a staff surgeon one afternoon, I saw patients he’d successfully treated for prostate obstruction, diverticulitis of the colon, a tubercular abscess of the chest…appendicitis, a staghorn stone in the kidney, and a cancer of the right hand…Using just textbooks and advice from one another, the surgeons at this ordinary district hospital in India had developed an astonishing range of expertise” (243-244). This example is just one of many that support the theme that even people with the least can do almost anything.
In addition to spreading the idea that doctors all around the world struggle for other people’s lives, there is also a part of the book all about what is right and wrong. This was a very interesting part of the book because of all the controversy within the content. Gawande talks about what to do when a patient needs to be a naked, what should follow after something goes wrong under the doctors’ care, how much doctors should be paid, how involved doctors should be in executions of criminals, and how long to keep fighting for a patient’s life. I found the chapter On Fighting in this part of the book to be my favorite. Gawande says, “I used to think that the hardest struggle of doctoring is learning the skills. But it is not…it is not the strain of the work either… the hardest part of being a doctor, I have found, is to know what you have power over and what you don’t” (154). Here, Gawande is referring to the controversy of giving up on a patient or trying too hard and ruining their lives further. A doctor never wants to hurt their patients; after all, they are trying to save their lives. But, “At some point you have to admit that you are up against a problem you are not going to solve and that, by pushing further and harder, you might well do more harm than good. Sometimes there is nothing you can do” (163). There are many tough questions in being a doctor, and Gawande discusses many of them throughout this part of the book.
In other parts, he also discusses things from new discoveries to deaths in wars. Better encompasses pretty much every aspect of being a doctor, and is also well-written and organized. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and learning about the questions, controversies, and joys of being a doctor, and now I can see things more from a doctor’s point of view.
”“This book is unlike anything i would ever read. It was full of facts. Every moment he was pounding information into your mind. I did learn a lot though. I'm going to be honest. I disliked this book.”
Emily K wrote this review Thursday, September 24 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“Even better! If only everyone in the medical field could read this. As an engineer, I especially liked the fact that he looked at medicine with as much of an analytical mind as possible. A very easy read and lots to learn.”
Anjana N wrote this review Wednesday, September 9 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“excellent read into the world of health care...”
Anand K wrote this review Thursday, August 20 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Not as good as complications, I liked some sections but on others I just had no interest in the subject matter”
Kay J wrote this review Monday, July 6 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
