Just using a checklist requires [doctors] to embrace different values from ones we've had, like humility, discipline, teamwork.

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.

Courage is strength in the face of knowledge of what is to be feared or hoped. Wisdom is prudent strength.

In every industrialized nation, the movement to reform health care has begun with stories about cruelty.

Are doctors who make mistakes villains? No, because then we all are.

I chose surgery because I thought that perhaps this would make me more like the kind of person I wanted to be.

Having great components is not enough, and yet we've been obsessed in medicine with components. We want the best drugs, the best technologies, the best specialists, but we don't think too much about how it all comes together.