Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Complications - Atul Gawande

Dear Dr Gawande,

I am becoming a super fan of yours.  Much as I think this is not as important a book as Being Mortal, for many I am sure it will be somewhat of an eye opener.  In the twenty five years I have been in the medical field, much has changed, the technology available, the skills surgeons such as yourself now have due to the tools and eduction available and most importantly I think there has been a huge shift in patient expectation.  Patients and their families expect diagnoses and answers that sometimes cannot be answered.

You do a fine job of explaining that surgery is an imperfect science.  You can have a hundred patients with the same symptoms and diagnosis, but not everybody will respond to surgery or treatment in the same way, and there can be a variety of outcomes that cannot be predicted.

Thank you for being a voice of reason, and for presenting to the public, what we in the medical fiend understand about medicine.  4/5

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