I Learned About A Lot Of Things

We Look For Medicine To Be An Orderly Field Of Knowledge And Procedure. But It Is Not. It Is An Imperfect Science, An Enterprise Of Constantly Changing Knowledge, Uncertain Information, Fallible Individuals, And At The Same Time Lives On The Line. There Is Science In What We Do, Yes, But Also Habit, Intuition, And Sometimes Plain Old Guessing. The Gap Between What We Know And What We Aim For Persists. And This Gap Complicates Everything We Do.

Don’t Let Yourself Be. Find Something New To Try, Something To Change. Count How Often It Succeeds And How Often It Doesn’t. Write About It. Ask A Patient Or A Colleague What They Think About It. See If You Can Keep The Conversation Going.

I Think The Extreme Complexity Of Medicine Has Become More Than An Individual Clinician Can Handle. But Not More Than Teams Of Clinicians Can Handle.

I Learned About A Lot Of Things In Medical School, But Mortality Wasn't One Of Them.

There Are Times When You Have Sharp Elbows, And People Are Trying To Muscle You Out Of Certain Meetings - Because Then People Could Leak To The Press That You Had A Role In Certain Decisions. I, At Twenty-six, Was Very Impatient And Didn't Know How To Keep My Powder Dry. I Was Running A Team Of Seventy-five People When I Had Never Been A Boss. I Was The Worst Boss Ever.