Expertise Is The Mantra Of Modern Medicine.

You Can't Make A Recipe For Something As Complicated As Surgery. Instead, You Can Make A Recipe For How To Have A Team That's Prepared For The Unexpected.

No 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.

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.

Once You Start To Ask Patients About Their Priorities, You Discover What They're Living For. Once You Uncover That, It Helps You, As A Doctor, Decide What To Fight For. And When We Do That, We Often End Up Identifying Limits To The Kind Of Care That People Want. One's Assumption Is That These People Are Going To Live Shorter Lives, But What We're Doing Is Protecting Quality Of Life. In Doing So, You Sometimes End Up Helping People Live Longer. Certainly, You Help People Live Better Days And With More Purpose In Their Lives.

Good Checklists, On The Other Hand Are Precise. They Are Efficient, To The Point, And Easy To Use Even In The Most Difficult Situations. They Do Not Try To Spell Out Everything--a Checklist Cannot Fly A Plane. Instead, They Provide Reminders Of Only The Most Critical And Important Steps--the Ones That Even The Highly Skilled Professional Using Them Could Miss. Good Checklists Are, Above All, Practical.