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.
Atul GawandeNo matter what measures are taken, doctors will sometimes falter, and it isn't reasonable to ask that we achieve perfection. What is reasonable is to ask that we never cease to aim for it.
Atul GawandeYou 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 dont have the physical skills but because they dont have the moral skills - to practise and admit failure.
Atul GawandeWe always hope for the easy fix: the one simple change that will erase a problem in a stroke. But few things in life work this way. Instead, success requires making a hundred small steps go right - one after the other, no slipups, no goofs, everyone pitching in.
Atul GawandeIn many ways, the effort to study philosophy was my rebellion away from medicine. I'm the son of two Indian immigrant physicians, so the natural path for me would have been to become a doctor. I ended up doing the master's degree at Oxford in politics, philosophy, and economics while already having a seat in medical school. I was keeping that as my escape hatch. But my hope was that I might become a philosopher or something else entirely.
Atul Gawande