Culture matters. Of course, if physicians are rewarded or penalized for their service and results, the culture will change. But the key values we doctors are being pressed to embrace are humility, teamwork, and discipline.
Atul GawandeMaking systems work is the great task of my generation of physicians and scientists. But I would go further and say that making systems work - whether in healthcare, education, climate change, making a pathway out of poverty - is the great task of our generation as a whole.
Atul GawandePeople underestimate the importance of dilligence as a virtue. No doubt it has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is defined as "the constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken."... Understood, however, as the prerequisite of great accomplishment, diligence stands as one of the most difficult challenges facing any group of people who take on tasks of risk and consequence. It sets a high, seemingly impossible, expectation for performance and human behavior.
Atul Gawande