A good man to know

Atul Gawande is a surgeon and a staff writer for the New Yorker. His latest book is well worth your time.

If you’re looking for a quick fix, try Gawande’s third book, The Checklist Manifesto. If you’re looking for writing that gets you thinking, and reading again, this is a safe bet. Whatever the provocation, this book is a must-read.

It may not be a bad idea, if an impractical one, to read his first two books before this one: Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science (2002), and Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance (2007). Not that this, the third, is in any way linked to the first two. But you could get an idea of how the mind of the writer works, as precisely as a surgical procedure, with as much attention to detail. Amazon.com advertises his books as “essential reading for anyone involved in medicine”. That last word could as easily be replaced with “life”. For Gawande, surgeon at a Massachusetts hospital and staff writer at the New Yorker, in telling the tale, draws on his own experiences as a student of science and a practitioner of medicine. But what makes his writing honest and relevant is that through his own experience and discoveries he is able to provide us with matter for thought and for action in whatever we have chosen to do. All that he talks about is both believable and doable. They are stories of ordinary men and women, himself included, who have been mystified or bewildered, fallible and guilty both, but who have also been exhilarated and buoyed, not just by achievements, but by understanding.

The Checklist Manifesto makes a case for a checklist in our lives. On the face of it a simple, some may think inconsequential, ‘even ridiculous’ procedure, of writing things down in order of priority and following it meticulously. Gawande argues that we need a strategy to overcome, or to try and overcome, what he calls “avoidable failure”, which is a constant in life. We fail even as knowledge increases, because “the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely or reliably… this means we need a different strategy… one that builds on experience and takes advantage of the knowledge people have but somehow also makes up for our inevitable human inadequacies”.

This strategy, he reasons, is the checklist, first introduced by the US Air Force and now standard procedure in many hospitals, and in fields as diverse as investment banking and architecture. He cites numerous examples to illustrate the point that something as basic as a checklist can not just simplify but also make a difference to inevitable human inadequacies.

In an address to the graduating class at Stanford University in June this year, Gawande said we need to “find ways to make the most of what is known and cope with what is not”, and for that, “values of teamwork instead of individual autonomy, ambition for the right process rather than the right technology, and, perhaps above all, humility”.

So read his books, know his mind and for his foray into writing, thank Slate magazine editor Jacob Weisberg.

THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO
Author: Atul Gawande
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 224
Price: Rs 399