Better
by Atul Gawande · first published 2007
63% recommend37% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Readable, anecdote-driven look at how medicine improves performance, covering why good techniques fail to spread and how checklists and policy shape outcomes; suggested for anyone curious about healthcare.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Explores the efforts of physicians to close the gap between best intentions and best performance in the face of insurmountable obstacles, discussing such topics as the ethical considerations of lethal injections, malpractice, and surgical errors.
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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Non-fiction: * 'Better' by Atul Gawande (also his 'Complications' and of course 'The Checklist Manifesto') * 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson. Fiction: * 'Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders'…
on “Ask HN: What are the best books you've read in the past year?” ↗I recommend reading Atul Gawande's books: The Checklist Manifesto http://www.amazon.com/Checklist-Manifesto-How-Things-Right/d... Better http://www.amazon.com/Better-Surgeons-Performance-Atul-Gawan... He's a New Yorker writer and practicing surgeon. His books contain lots of insight about ways that medicine could be vastly improved by…
on “Ask HN: I have $100k in cash. In what kind of startup should I invest it?” ↗…homicide unit: https://books.google.com/books/about/Homicide.html?id=N8LS0b... All of Atul Gawande's books, notably: The Checklist Manifesto [1]: http://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist-manifesto/ Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance: http://atulgawande.com/book/better/ [1] You can read the essay that this book is based on in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist
on “Ask HN: Books with a high signal to noise ratio?” ↗Somewhat related, I thought Atul Gawande's take on why C. Sections are so common now was fascinating. It's all in his book "Better: A Surgeon's notes on performance" but I've linked to a summary of the obstetrics section below. Relevant passage: "In the 1960s fewer than 5 percent of deliveries were Cesareans and more than 40 percent…
on “Why Is Giving Birth So Hard? Revisiting the 'Obstetrical Dilemma'” ↗…authorities-- "If you're changing the way things are done, you need to perform controlled FDA-approved studies." http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_... Also, you should read his book Better, which is just page after page of interesting stuff; Atul Gawande is the Malcom Gladwell of medicine, but I think his stuff is far more engaging.
on “Surgeons in England to adopt checklists - expect to halve death rate” ↗While it seems obvious that this probably didn't help, Atul Gawande's Better (which came out before the CIA business had been exposed) has a really interesting chapter about polio vaccinations in Pakistan which includes stories about parents hiding their children from the vaccination…
…patients) is mistakes. Chop off the wrong arm. Misdiagnosis. Adverse effects from drug interaction, allergy, whatever. Second biggest threat is poor policy, procedure compliance. Awul Gawande's book Better is a good primer. http://gawande.com/better
on “How to secure health data? Cryptography and security models” ↗Atul Gawande - Better or Being Mortal Non-technical but very interesting and emotive to most people. Healthcare analytics
on “Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?” ↗…techniques... That's an excellent example of another thing that won't happen, mainly because it already doesn't happen; medicine is a field where there are many, many examples of hard-data demonstrating better techniques, well-known, that nonetheless don't spread. Atul Gawande discusses it, amongst other interesting things, in his book "Better"; I namechecked that book mainly because, as well as discussing…
on “If I Had a Hammer” ↗I like this paragraph of the article best (but there are a lot of other good paragraphs, building to an overall good whole, so I encourage you to read the whole article): "In Better, Atul Gawande argues that when we think of improving medicine, we always imagine making new advances, discovering the gene responsible for a disease, and so on — and forget that we can simply take what…
on “Should Surgeons Keep Score?” ↗1. "Meditations" – Marcus Aurelius 2. "The Practicing Mind" – Thomas Sterner 3. "Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance" – Atul Gawande (I'm not a surgeon; the principles herein are universal) (honorable mention: "How to Win Friends and Influence People" – Dale Carnegie; various biographies…
on “Ask HN: What three books impacted your career the most?” ↗I've read most of Atul Gawande's books about the medical industry (Better, Complications, and The Checklist Manifesto) and I found the three of them extremely relevant to my career as a computer scientist. The latter book is by far his most famous, but IMHO the other two are…
on “Surgeon Atul Gawande selected as CEO of new health care company from Amazon” ↗And I'll add Atul Gawande's “Better” and “Complications” on general surgery in particular and medicine in general.
on “Ask HN: Recommend books that give you insight into other professions” ↗Can't resist posting this anecdote from Atul Gawande's (best known for his New Yorker medical pieces, such as the one about checklists) book, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance...at the end, he describes spending some time in India as a visiting surgeon to see how innovation was possible in comparatively squalid circumstances. The Nanded hospital…
on “Heart Surgery in India for $1,583 Costs $106,385 in U.S.” ↗* In Defense of Liberal Edication By Farred Zakaria * Confidence Men By Ros Suskind * Dark Money by Jane Meyer * Better by Atul Gawande * The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande * Essentialism by Greg Mckeown * Contagious by Jonah Berger * Sapiens by Yuval Harari * The Pentagons Brain by Annie Jacobson * Shoe Dog…
on “Ask HN: What books have you read in the first half of 2016?” ↗