Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance

Harvard-educated Dr. Atul Gawande is a staff writer for The New Yorker, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and founder of two nonprofits aimed at innovating surgical practices around the world. He wrote Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance to explore the attributes that make a good doctor. Published in 2007 as a follow-up to his 2002 National Book Award Finalist Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, Better explores “how situations of risk really work” because for Gawande, the difference between a 99.6% success rate and a 99.96% success rate equals lives saved.

Better is about the practice of medicine and also functions as a treatise on how to live a full and meaningful life. Through a series of essays, some of which he originally wrote as separate pieces for The New Yorker, Gawande strikes parallels between the way the medical community operates and the way individuals live their daily lives, and how we all can do better. He goes beyond personal experience and uses field research and records to support his arguments.

Divided into three parts—“Diligence,” “Doing Right,” and “Ingenuity”—the book lays out a blueprint for self-betterment while simultaneously posing deep moral questions. Gawande examines how humans are meant to interact with the world and what their responsibilities to society are. He also explores the pitfalls that occur within the medical field. Gawande shows how, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, a planned approach and a tenacity to work hard will guarantee success for anyone, especially members of the medical community.

Better also portrays failure as a part of life. Gawande dispels common fears about failure and insists that failure is necessary for development and growth. Without failure, there can be no success. According to Gawande, though humans are flawed and imperfect, they can still strive to achieve the best possible outcomes, regardless of the personal or societal problems they face.