Gawande

Atul Gawande’s book, Better, is truly an example of the struggles that people of all different walks of life must deal with on a daily basis. Gawande breaks his novel down into three different categories: Diligence, doing right, and ingenuity. The focus of my essay will be on the second section, doing right. I believe this part of the novel was the most relevant to the notion of people making errors in their judgments and actions, and how those same people can fix and learn from it them. The very title of the section, “doing right” is almost an impossible idea because the line between right and wrong, especially in a medical setting, can be so blurred. Doctor Gawande recalls a few stories that shed light on the painstaking world that doctors and patients can face, in regards to “doing the right thing”. What a doctor can see as making a proper diagnosis, a patient can see as malpractice and negligence. By examining the stories that Atul Gawande narrates in the “Doing right” section, the blurry line can become a bit clearer to the reader.
The opening of the section explains the difficulties that doctors face when examining patients. Many different countries have different protocol for patient examinations. Clearly, there can be some nervous and uncomfortable feelings by both doctors and patients when examinations are made. For example, breast and rectal exams can be very intimidating and personal for a patient. The main point that Doctor Gawande makes is that unintended mistakes can be made by doctors for a variety of reasons. There are no clear standards in the United States for handling a patient examination. The scary stat is that, “one in every two hundred physicians is disciplined for sexual misconduct with patients sometime during his or her career.”
Because there are no clear rules or protocol for examinations, the doctor explains some very simple rules that he follows. He explains that he is always articulate in his speech, shows decorum in his attire,...