In gripping accounts of true cases, surgeon Atul Gawande explores the power and the limits of medicine, offering an unflinching view from the scalpel's edge. Complications lays bare a science not in its idealized form but as it actually is--uncertain, perplexing, and profoundly human.

Complications is a 2002 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller On Tyranny comes an impassioned condemnation of America's pandemic response and an urgent call to rethink health and freedom.

On December 29, 2019, historian Timothy Snyder fell gravely ill. Unable to stand, barely able to think, he waited for hours in an emergency room before being correctly diagnosed and rushed into surgery. Over the next few days, as he clung to life and the first light of a new year came through his window, he found himself reflecting on the fragility of health, not recognized in America as a human right but without which all rights and freedoms have no meaning.

And that was before the pandemic. We have since watched American hospitals, long understaffed and undersupplied, buckling under waves of ill patients. The federal government made matters worse through willful ignorance, misinformation, and profiteering. Our system of commercial medicine failed the ultimate test, and thousands of Americans died.

In this eye-opening cri de coeur, Snyder traces the societal forces that led us here and outlines the lessons we must learn to survive. In examining some of the darkest moments of recent history and of his own life, Snyder finds glimmers of hope and principles that could lead us out of our current malaise. Only by enshrining healthcare as a human right, elevating the authority of doctors and medical knowledge, and planning for our children's future can we create an America where everyone is truly free.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

The New York Times bestselling author of Being Mortal and Complications examines, in riveting accounts of medical failure and triumph, how success is achieved in a complex and risk-filled profession

The struggle to perform well is universal: each one of us faces fatigue, limited resources, and imperfect abilities in whatever we do. But nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine, where lives are on the line with every decision. In this book, Atul Gawande explores how doctors strive to close the gap between best intentions and best performance in the face of obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable.

Gawande's gripping stories of diligence, ingenuity, and what it means to do right by people take us to battlefield surgical tents in Iraq, to labor and delivery rooms in Boston, to a polio outbreak in India, and to malpractice courtrooms around the country. He discusses the ethical dilemmas of doctors' participation in lethal injections, examines the influence of money on modern medicine, and recounts the astoundingly contentious history of hand washing. And as in all his writing, Gawande gives us an inside look at his own life as a practicing surgeon, offering a searingly honest firsthand account of work in a field where mistakes are both unavoidable and unthinkable.

At once unflinching and compassionate, Better is an exhilarating journey narrated by arguably the best nonfiction doctor-writer around (Salon). Gawande's investigation into medical professionals and how they progress from merely good to great provides rare insight into the elements of success, illuminating every area of human endeavor.

What does it mean to be the perfect doctor? Are you a medical student hoping to be one, a patient who wants to have one, or someone curious about the human side of medicine? This collection of stories offers a glimpse into the diverse lives of doctors and illustrates that there are as many versions of perfect as there are people. The students, doctors, and patients in this book learn what the perfect doctor means to them through loss, humor, and reflection. Their elaborative, insightful, sometimes funny, and always heartfelt narratives can help you decide what the perfect doctor means to you.

This oft-quoted all-time favorite of the medical community will gladden--and strengthen--the hearts of patients, doctors, and anyone entering medical study, internship, or practice. With unassailable logic and rapier wit, the sage Dr. Oscar London muses on the challenges and joys of doctoring, and imparts timeless truths, reality checks, and poignant insights gleaned from 30 years of general practice--while never taking himself (or his profession) too seriously.

The classic book on the art and humor of practicing medicine, celebrating its 20th anniversary in a new gift edition with updates throughout. Previous editions have sold more than 200,000 copies. The perfect gift for med students and grads as well as new and practicing physicians. Approximately 17,000 students graduate from med school each spring in North America.

A brilliant and courageous doctor reveals, in gripping accounts of true cases, the power and limits of modern medicine.

Sometimes in medicine the only way to know what is truly going on in a patient is to operate, to look inside with one's own eyes. This book is exploratory surgery on medicine itself, laying bare a science not in its idealized form but as it actually is -- complicated, perplexing, and profoundly human.

Atul Gawande offers an unflinching view from the scalpel's edge, where science is ambiguous, information is limited, the stakes are high, yet decisions must be made. In dramatic and revealing stories of patients and doctors, he explores how deadly mistakes occur and why good surgeons go bad. He also shows us what happens when medicine comes up against the inexplicable: an architect with incapacitating back pain for which there is no physical cause; a young woman with nausea that won't go away; a television newscaster whose blushing is so severe that she cannot do her job. Gawande offers a richly detailed portrait of the people and the science, even as he tackles the paradoxes and imperfections inherent in caring for human lives.

At once tough-minded and humane, Complications is a new kind of medical writing, nuanced and lucid, unafraid to confront the conflicts and uncertainties that lie at the heart of modern medicine, yet always alive to the possibilities of wisdom in this extraordinary endeavor.

Complications is a 2002 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.

This is a poignant and moving narrative collection from women who each in their own way were pioneers in their field of surgery. The story of the courage, physical strength, stamina and, most of all, the mental fortitude required to complete surgical training is beautifully conveyed here. This collection will hopefully both inspire and make the path easier for the next generation of surgeons, both women and men. - Abraham Verghese, MD; best-selling author of Cutting for Stone, The Tennis Partner, and My Own Country This book is an enthralling read. It is all too rare to hear the stories of surgeons, and even rarer to hear those of women surgeons. Yet here they are, told straight out, fearlessly, by residents and retirees alike. The stories are by turns funny, heartbreaking, flabbergasting, infuriating, inspiring-and at times all of these at once. Each voice here is singular and fascinating. But the collective effect is overwhelmingly moving. You want to hear more. - Atul Gawande, MD; staff writer for The New Yorker; surgeon; researcher; best-selling author of Complications, The Checklist Manifesto, and Better An inspiring compendium of stories that challenged a generation and defined an era. Being a Woman Surgeon will be the archival account of the women who dared to radically advance the world's greatest profession. - Marty Makary, MD, MPH; Johns Hopkins surgeon; New York Times best-selling author of Unaccountable An extraordinary collection of essays written by an even more extraordinary group of women, this book offers an unparalleled view of what it is like to be a woman surgeon. It is the book that I wish I had as a medical student and that even now I find inspiring. - Pauline Chen, New York Times columnist; surgeon; author of Final Exam-A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality Dr. John has carefully collected an illuminating anthology of experiential writings from women surgeons. Her contributors vary in surgical specialty, years of experience, and personal situation. This rich and literate collection will prove fascinating reading for anyone interested in the world of medicine. - Carol Scott-Conner, MD, FACS; surgeon; author of A Few Small Moments Dr. Preeti R. John is a critical care surgeon who works in Baltimore, Maryland. She is triple board certified in General Surgery, Surgical Critical Care and Hospice and Palliative Medicine.

Healing Healthcare is a poignant exploration of the intricate challenges within the healthcare landscape post-pandemic and solutions for change. Faced with shortages and systemic upheavals, the healthcare system currently teeters on the brink of collapse, prompting responses from a respected group of healthcare professionals who each spotlight evidence-based strategies for recovery. With a diverse set of contributors from academia, practice, and the community, Healing Healthcare is a collaborative effort that serves as a beacon of hope, paving the way for a truly healed and resilient healthcare ecosystem.

At its core, Healing Healthcare amplifies the voices of nurse leaders. This book is filled with the solutions, action steps, and strategies to fix our broken healthcare system, divided into three distinct sections: Workforce, Well-Being, and Wisdom.

Contributors to the Workforce section tackle issues of inequities, incivility, and generational needs, emphasizing the crucial requirement for emotional safety.

Nurses need work settings that promote well-being and meet their needs for a wellness culture, as is explored and made clear in the Well-Being section.

Wisdom moves us beyond common discussions on maximizing patient value as contributors explore education, cultural misalignments, lack of recognition, and uncertainty, providing a nuanced understanding of the challenges faced by healthcare professionals and our next chapter in the healthcare reform space.

Healing Healthcare is for the leader who wants to make an immediate impact. This book is a must-read for healthcare professionals, packed with vetted ideas for change; we urge you to embrace, and be, that change.

Anatole Broyard, long-time book critic, book review editor, and essayist for the New York Times, wants to be remembered. He will be, with this collection of irreverent, humorous essays he wrote concerning the ordeals of life and death--many of which were written during the battle with cancer that led to his death in 1990.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

A heartbreakingly eloquent and unsentimental meditation on mortality . . . Some writing is so rich and well-spoken that commentary is superfluous, even presumptuous. . . . Read this book, and celebrate a cultured spirit made fine, it seems, by the coldest of touches.--Los Angeles Times

Succeeds brilliantly . . . Anatole Broyard has joined his father but not before leaving behind a legacy rich in wisdom about the written word and the human condition. He has died. But he lives as a writer and we are the wealthier for it.--The Washington Post Book World

A virtuoso performance . . . The central essays of Intoxicated By My Illness were written during the last fourteen months of Broyard's life. They are held in a gracious setting of his previous writings on death in life and literature, including a fictionalized account of his own father's dying of cancer. The title refers to his reaction to the knowledge that he had a life-threatening illness. His literary sensibility was ignited, his mind flooded with image and metaphor, and he decided to employ these intuitive gifts to light his way into the darkness of his disease and its treatment. . . . Many other people have chronicled their last months . . . Few are as vivid as Broyard, who brilliantly surveys a variety of books on illness and death along the way as he draws us into his writer's imagination, set free now by what he describes as the deadline of life. . . . A] remarkable book, a lively man of dense intelligence and flashing wit who lets go and yet at the same time comtains himself in the style through which he remains alive.--The New York Times Book Review

Despite much pain, Anatole Broyard continued to write until the final days of his life. He used his writing to rage, in the words of Dylan Thomas, against the dying of the light. . . . Shocking, no-holds-barred and utterly exquisite.--The Baltimore Sun

Few subjects hold more universal appeal than that of medicine, and surely few books have evoked medicine's drama and magic more powerfully than On Doctoring. In its many forms, from age-old ritual to the cutting edge of modern science, medicine concerns us all. It is a human profession, practiced by people who have dedicated their lives not only to science but also to humanity. In the words of the great physician-writer Sir William Osler, The physician needs a clear head and a kind heart; his work is arduous and complex, requiring the exercise of the very highest faculties of the mind, while constantly appealing to the emotions and higher feelings. It is the humanity in medicine that has inspired the pens of countless writers, and that has now been captured in this remarkable anthology of medical literature.

This newly expanded edition of On Doctoring is an extraordinary collection of stories, poems, and essays written by physicians and non-physicians alike -- works that eloquently record what it is like to be sick, to be cured, to lose, or to triumph. Drawing on the full spectrum of human emotions, the editors have included selections from such important and diverse writers as Anton Chekhov, W. H. Auden, William Carlos Williams, John Keats, John Donne, Robert Coles, Pablo Neruda, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, Alice Walker, Kurt Vonnegut, and Abraham Verghese. Among the new authors included in this edition are Rainer Maria Rilke, Lisel Mueller, and May Sarton.

In this era of managed healthcare, when medicine is becoming more institutionalized and impersonal, this book recaptures the breadth and the wonder of the medical profession. Presenting the issues, concerns, and challenges facing doctors and patients alike, On Doctoring is at once illuminating and provocative, a compelling record of the human spirit.

Part travelogue, part autobiography, part medical mystery, this moving book by the poet laureate of medicine (The New York Times) and bestselling author of Awakenings takes us to a tiny Pacific atoll and the island of Guam to explore the genesis of disease, the wonders of botany, and the complexities of being human.

Sacks's total immersion in island life makes this luminous, beautifully written report a wonderous voyage of discovery. As a travel writer, Sacks ranks with Paul Theroux and Bruce Chatwin. As an investigator of the mind's mysteries, he is in a class by himself.
--Publishers Weekly

For Oliver Sacks, islands conjure up equally the romance of Melville and Stevenson, the adventure of Magellan and Cook, and the scientific wonder of Darwin and Wallace.

Drawn to the tiny Pacific atoll of Pingelap by intriguing reports of an isolated community of islanders born totally color-blind, Sacks finds himself setting up a clinic in a one-room island dispensary, where he listens to these achromatopic islanders describe their colorless world in rich terms of pattern and tone, luminance and shadow. And on Guam, where he goes to investigate the puzzling neurodegenerative paralysis endemic there for a century, he becomes, for a brief time, an island neurologist, making house calls with his colleague John Steele, amid crowing cockerels, cycad jungles, and the remains of a colonial culture.

Out of this unexpected journey, Sacks has woven an unforgettable narrative which immerses us in the romance of island life, and shares his own compelling vision of the mysteries of being human.

A baby is born, after a long nerve-wracking labour. A family struggles to make the right end-of-life decision for an elderly relative. Addicts and eccentrics find themselves in hospital emergency rooms. And doctors are there: treating patients with illness and injuries, day in and day out. In 123 Very Short Stories from a Long Life in Medicine, Dr. Stan Lubin recounts his 50 year career as a physician working in Canada, the UK, and US, along with a stint in the Truk Islands, Micronesia.

This memoir, composed of personal anecdotes, is an engaging and emotional journey, not just for those in the medical profession but all readers who wish to get a glimpse inside the lives of people seeking care in both small towns and cities. Written with a depth of medical detail yet still accessible to casual readers, Dr. Lubin's thought-provoking stories will make readers consider their own beliefs, vulnerabilities, joys and, indeed, mortality.

123 Very Short Stories from a Long Life in Medicine also serves as an uplifting reminder of the expertise, compassion, and unflagging work of doctors and other healthcare professionals who support patients and their families through all stages of life.

A collection of fascinating and unforgettable true stories of patients struggling with life-threatening neurological diseases. Told with empathy, neurologist Dr. Adamo conveys the lessons we can all learn when dealing with adversity and tragedy. These dramatic accounts show us how both courage and compassion are inherent in the human condition.

In this inspired anthology, doctors relate true stories from their professional lives, capturing disillusionments and triumphs encountered along the way. Essays by such distinguished writers as Peter D. Kramer, Kay Redfield Jamison, Danielle Ofri, Robert Coles, Lauren Slater, Sandeep Jauhar, and Perri Klass create a vivid mural of the medical world, from a student's uneasy first encounter with a cadaver to a veteran doctor's memories of the emotionally charged days and nights of residency.

No Apparent Distress begins with a mistake made by a white medical student that may have hastened the death of a working-class black man who sought care in a student-run clinic. Haunted by this error, the author--herself from a working-class background--delves into the stories and politics of a medical training system in which students learn on the bodies of the poor. Part confession, part family history, No Apparent Distress is at once an indictment of American health care and a deeply moving tale of one doctor's coming-of-age.

These are the trying, true stories of the mobile emergency medical technicians who often are the only thing standing between any one of us and death. Author Pat Ivey uses her extensive firsthand experiences, as well as an unflinching eye for drama and detail, to bring us the unheard tales of heroism and courage of the EMT units. She takes us into a hidden world of children in need, women seeking shelter from the storm of abuse, and the realities of industrial accidents. A simple car crash turns into a Herculean effort, an epic struggle against the clock and against the odds.
Tragic misfortunes that usually occur silently in everyday America and the men and women who try to heal these heart-pounding predicaments are put reverently on stage in this heroic, honest, and compassionate compilation of true action adventures.

Discover the profound impact of storytelling and narrative in the medical field with, Narrative Medicine: The Fifth Vital Sign, by Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA.

The book is divided into two sections:

Section 1: Instruction

Section 2: Inspiration

Through this intriguing collection of essays - the author's third in a trilogy - clinicians, patients and caregivers will learn about the healing power of narrative medicine. Drawing from psychiatric practice and encounters with various health systems, Dr. Lazarus provides unique insight into navigating the challenges in modern medicine through storytelling, memoir, and medical narratives.

Section 1 of this book serves as an instructional primer of narrative medicine for physicians and creative writing students. Section 2 explores and articulates important themes impacting contemporary practice, including leadership, medical education, artificial intelligence, health disparities, and the loss of human touch to specialization.

The essays provide guidance for writing compelling narratives and integrating them with medical practice, enabling clinicians to reconnect with the joy of patient care. Narrative medicine is considered the fifth vital sign because it detects and monitors the well-being of patients and physicians.