Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
    Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
    Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
    Audiobook9 hours

    Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

    Written by Atul Gawande

    Narrated by Robert Petkoff

    5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    **A new unabridged recording**

    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 audio 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 was a 2002 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.

    A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateJul 21, 2020
    ISBN9781427215291
    Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
    Author

    Atul Gawande

    Atul Gawande is the author of several bestselling books: Complications, a finalist for the National Book Award; Better; The Checklist Manifesto, and Being Mortal. He is also a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. He has won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science, a MacArthur Fellowship, and two National Magazine Awards. In his work in public health, he is Founder and Chair of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally. He is also chair of Haven, where he was CEO from 2018-2020. He and his wife have three children and live in Newton, Massachusetts.

    More audiobooks from Atul Gawande

    Related to Complications

    Related audiobooks

    Medical For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Trying To Understand 'What Made Maddy Run'

      Aug 2, 2017

      Journalist Kate Fagan's new book digs into the life of a young woman whose suicide shocked the University of Pennsylvania, where she ran track. Madison Holleran's life seemed perfect, until it wasn't.

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Cardiologist’s 9/11 Story

      Sep 13, 2018

      The morgue was inside Brooks Brothers. I was standing at the corner of Church and Dey, right next to the rubble of the World Trade Center, when a policeman shouted that doctors were needed at the menswear emporium inside the building at One Liberty P

      14 min read

    • Article

      Science Just Saved My Daughter—The Most Important Reason Why I #StandUpForScience

      Apr 19, 2017

      The morning of April 4, 2017 began with excitement. My family and I were ready to fly to Boston, where we were to meet up with friends and their children at the geography conference. Our five-month old baby Amaia had lost some weight and been all kin

      4 min read

    • Article

      I Need Science

      Mar 1, 2018

      SITTING IN the radiation oncology clinic exam room with me was Mr. N, sixty-three years old, who until the previous month had worked full-time as a county judge. Dressed in wrinkled khaki pants, sneakers, and a faded blue T-shirt, he presented a cont

      14 min read

    • Article

      Secrets Of The Dead

      Aug 7, 2020

      Secrets Of The Dead
      7 min read

    • Article

      Opinion: Liquid Biopsy Research Should Include The Perspectives Of Patients Like Me

      Mar 18, 2019

      I'm a rational, level-headed patient advocate. But I lost it when facing a biopsy for my own #cancer diagnosis. A #liquidbiopsy would have helped.

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Big One

      Dec 1, 2020

      The Big One
      12 min read

    • Article

      Thumpity-Thump

      Mar 27, 2018

      Thumpity-Thump
      11 min read

    • Article

      What We Get Wrong About Dying

      Dec 28, 2017

      My first exposure to the death of a patient came during my third year of medical school, in Israel. It was my first clinical rotation, which happened to be in internal medicine. Tagging along with my mentor, a senior physician to whom I had been assi

      12 min read

    • Article

      Doctors KILLED ME to SAVE MY LIFE

      Jun 16, 2021

      Will you help me look after the baby?’ I asked my one-year-old, Leo, as he beamed at me. I loved being a mum and I couldn’t wait to do it all over again. At 36 weeks, I’d had a few bumps in the road with this pregnancy, as scans had shown my bub was

      3 min read

    • Article

      Hospitals I Have Known

      Mar 8, 2022

      Hospitals I Have Known
      11 min read

    • Article

      Operation Fail

      Feb 14, 2020

      Operation Fail
      9 min read

    • Article

      Death Oh, Oh Ever Teach Me…

      Jan 27, 2020

      Death Oh, Oh Ever Teach Me…
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Complications

    5/5

    7 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      The stories are informative, compelling, and make you think. I am a better person and patient thanks to this book.