Atul Gawande
Author of Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
About the Author
Atul Gawande is a surgical resident in Boston and staff writer on medicine and science for The New Yorker. A former Rhodes scholar, he received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He lives with his wife and three children in Newton, Massachusetts. (Publisher Fact Sheets) Atul Gawande is a surgeon show more 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 is also the Executive Director of Ariadne Labs and chairman of Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally. He has written several books including Complications, Better, The Checklist Manifesto, and Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. He has won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science and two National Magazine Awards. He will be appearing at the 2015 Auckland Writers Festival in New Zealand. He won the prize for Adult Non-fiction in the Indies Choice Book Awards 2015 with Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Center for American Progress
Works by Atul Gawande
Associated Works
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (1985) — Introduction, some editions — 13,001 copies, 237 reviews
Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower's Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID (2026) — Foreword — 26 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Gawande, Atul
- Legal name
- Gawande, Atul Atmaram
- Birthdate
- 1965-11-05
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Harvard School of Public Health (M.P.H.|1999)
Harvard Medical School (M.D.|1995)
Balliol College, Oxford University (MA|1989)
Stanford University (BA|1987) - Occupations
- surgeon
professor
Federal bureaucrat
political advisor
writer
columnist - Organizations
- Harvard University
Brigham and Women's Hospital
The New Yorker - Awards and honors
- MacArthur Fellowship (2006)
American Philosophical Society (2012)
Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science (2014)
BBC Reith Lectures (2014)
Rhodes Scholar (1987)
Massachusetts Governor's Award in the Humanities (2016) (show all 7)
Newsweek Magazine's 20 Most Influential South Asians (2004) - Agent
- Tina Bennett
- Relationships
- Hobson, Kathleen (spouse)
- Short biography
- Atul Gawande was born in Brooklyn. He obtained his undergraduate degree at Stanford University. As a Rhodes Scholar, he spent a year at Oxford University. After two years at Harvard Medical School he left to become Bill Clinton's health care lieutenant during the 1992 campaign, and became a senior adviser in the Department of Health and Human Services after President Clinton's inauguration. He returned to medical school and earned his M.D in 1994, as well as an M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health. He practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and is director of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation. He is Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health and Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He is also a staff writer on medicine and science for the New Yorker.
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Brooklyn, New York, New York, USA
- Places of residence
- Brooklyn, New York, New York, USA
Athens, Ohio, USA
Newton, Massachusetts, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
Aging and death are things all of us have to deal with eventually, both in ourselves and in our loved ones. But, physician Atul Gawande says, these inevitabilities are often much worse than they actually have to be. People frequenty fail to communicate, or even consider, their end-of-life wishes until it's too late. Aggressive treatments for terminal diseases or measures aimed at providing safe environments for the infirm may end up making people's lives worse, rather than better. Few show more doctors are specifically trained in the care of the aged, and most begin their careers unprepared to deal with the dying. Above all, both doctors and patients are programmed to see healthcare purely in terms of identifying and treating specific medical problems... Which works well when your problem is a broken bone or a case of strep throat, but less so when it's an incurable cancer, or the general, systemic decline that comes with age.
That might make this sound like some hippie holistic-medicine manifesto. (You know the kind of thing: "Forget all the reductionist Western medicine, man! You've got to, like, treat the spirit with positive energy!"). It's absolutely not. Gawande's approach is very much grounded in medical reality, and he's got some actual science on his side. (E.g., the study that concluded that, counter-intuitively, terminal patients placed in hospice care actually lived longer, on average, than those who aggressively treated their conditions.) This isn't primarily about science and statistics, though; throughout the book, he focuses on real human beings and how they, their doctors, and their family members deal with infirmity and death, in all their awful complexity. This includes stories of his own family members, some of which must have been incredibly difficult to write about, but which I think are invaluable in helping the reader to connect to these issues on a human level.
His conclusions, ultimately, are ones that make a lot of sense to me: Doctors should be better prepared to deal with these concerns and to talk honestly with their patients about them. Everyone should have the difficult discussions about their end-of-life wishes ahead of time, especially those with terminal illnesses. Nursing homes should think of and treat the elderly less like hospital patients and more like people who need help to live lives that still have meaning. And doctors and patients should together consider not simply the question of what actions might help to shrink a tumor or prevent a broken hip, but on how to maximize the overall well-being of the person, given their individual priorities for what matters to them in the time they have left.
I was honestly a little reluctant to start this book, fearing it would be entirely too depressing. And I suppose it is, a bit. Aging and death are sad and scary subjects, and some of the stories Gawande tells are heartbreaking. (The descriptions of miserable, hopeless people in nursing homes particularly got to me. Being a woman with no children and meager savings, I fully expect that will be me someday, and the thought is terrifying.) But the book itself is hopeful, with genuinely useful suggestions for how we can make these things easier, both individually and as a society. And the writing is utterly compelling. It seems very odd to say "I couldn't put it down" about a book of this kind, but it's true. I couldn't. I ended up reading it all in less than a day.
Rating: A book this good about a subject this important surely cannot receive anything less than a 5/5. show less
That might make this sound like some hippie holistic-medicine manifesto. (You know the kind of thing: "Forget all the reductionist Western medicine, man! You've got to, like, treat the spirit with positive energy!"). It's absolutely not. Gawande's approach is very much grounded in medical reality, and he's got some actual science on his side. (E.g., the study that concluded that, counter-intuitively, terminal patients placed in hospice care actually lived longer, on average, than those who aggressively treated their conditions.) This isn't primarily about science and statistics, though; throughout the book, he focuses on real human beings and how they, their doctors, and their family members deal with infirmity and death, in all their awful complexity. This includes stories of his own family members, some of which must have been incredibly difficult to write about, but which I think are invaluable in helping the reader to connect to these issues on a human level.
His conclusions, ultimately, are ones that make a lot of sense to me: Doctors should be better prepared to deal with these concerns and to talk honestly with their patients about them. Everyone should have the difficult discussions about their end-of-life wishes ahead of time, especially those with terminal illnesses. Nursing homes should think of and treat the elderly less like hospital patients and more like people who need help to live lives that still have meaning. And doctors and patients should together consider not simply the question of what actions might help to shrink a tumor or prevent a broken hip, but on how to maximize the overall well-being of the person, given their individual priorities for what matters to them in the time they have left.
I was honestly a little reluctant to start this book, fearing it would be entirely too depressing. And I suppose it is, a bit. Aging and death are sad and scary subjects, and some of the stories Gawande tells are heartbreaking. (The descriptions of miserable, hopeless people in nursing homes particularly got to me. Being a woman with no children and meager savings, I fully expect that will be me someday, and the thought is terrifying.) But the book itself is hopeful, with genuinely useful suggestions for how we can make these things easier, both individually and as a society. And the writing is utterly compelling. It seems very odd to say "I couldn't put it down" about a book of this kind, but it's true. I couldn't. I ended up reading it all in less than a day.
Rating: A book this good about a subject this important surely cannot receive anything less than a 5/5. show less
I have always been in awe of medical people who can manage to excel in their field and also write for the reading public. That alone is a feat that boggles my mind. That he is able to do this so eloquently is real talent.
This book opens up a subject we all instinctively know we will have to face one day, but probably try, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid: the subject of end of life care, most especially in terms of quality of life versus medical intervention. And sadly, that is the show more very crux of the issue of our highly technical and medicalized society. Where once, a long time ago, people died at home, surrounded by family and traditional customs, today, in North America anyhow, the purpose of *medicine* seems to be to prolong life at all cost, regardless of whether it is actually benefitting the patient or not. In fact, such interventions seem to completely ignore the patient as a participant in the event altogether. Gawande talks about several patients of his and how their individual situations and choices were handled and dealt with, including hospital interventions, nursing homes, hospice care and assisted living centres. Then he turns the mirror on his own personal tale: the one of his own father's terminal illness and how he, as a doctor, came to experience the other side of the story, as it were.
I wish this book would be compulsory reading for every medical student from this day forward. I am not elderly, nor am I facing any health issues that are close to what Gawande talks about in this book. But aging is something none of us can avoid and frankly, I think about this a lot. This book offers a practical and honest look at questions, options and plans that everyone can learn from. show less
This book opens up a subject we all instinctively know we will have to face one day, but probably try, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid: the subject of end of life care, most especially in terms of quality of life versus medical intervention. And sadly, that is the show more very crux of the issue of our highly technical and medicalized society. Where once, a long time ago, people died at home, surrounded by family and traditional customs, today, in North America anyhow, the purpose of *medicine* seems to be to prolong life at all cost, regardless of whether it is actually benefitting the patient or not. In fact, such interventions seem to completely ignore the patient as a participant in the event altogether. Gawande talks about several patients of his and how their individual situations and choices were handled and dealt with, including hospital interventions, nursing homes, hospice care and assisted living centres. Then he turns the mirror on his own personal tale: the one of his own father's terminal illness and how he, as a doctor, came to experience the other side of the story, as it were.
I wish this book would be compulsory reading for every medical student from this day forward. I am not elderly, nor am I facing any health issues that are close to what Gawande talks about in this book. But aging is something none of us can avoid and frankly, I think about this a lot. This book offers a practical and honest look at questions, options and plans that everyone can learn from. show less
“THIS IS A book about the modern experience of mortality—about what it’s like to be creatures who age and die, how medicine has changed the experience and how it hasn’t, where our ideas about how to deal with our finitude have got the reality wrong.” – Atul Gawande
We do not like to think about our mortality but assessing in advance about what is most important to us is extremely relevant to how we spend our last days, assuming we are fortunate enough to avoid accident or sudden show more death. Gawande draws upon his medical background, experiences with end-of-life situations, research, and case studies to make a case for investigating what the patient wants rather than dispensing information and letting the patient decide, which is what is often done now. Some people value quality of life over taking extraordinary means to survive a short time longer, often at the cost of more pain and suffering.
The author makes a strong case for increasing individual freedoms in assisted living and nursing home arrangements, recommending earlier palliative care, and training doctors and other medical professionals in asking the right questions to help the patient make informed choices. He begins to discuss allowing individuals end-of-life decisions but does not go into much depth. Though it is obvious this book is written by a doctor, Gawande does a good job of avoiding medical jargon and explaining his perspective in straight-forward manner. He takes the subject matter to a personal level by sharing his father’s decline and eventual death, and how his family handled it. He advises holding those uncomfortable but necessary conversations with loved ones before a crisis arises.
I particularly liked the list of questions to ask in dealing with a terminal situation. I also appreciated learning more about hospice and that it is not solely related to imminent death, as is widely believed. Though it’s not pleasant to read about death and dying, this book contains valuable and pragmatic advice. I found it informative and worthwhile. show less
We do not like to think about our mortality but assessing in advance about what is most important to us is extremely relevant to how we spend our last days, assuming we are fortunate enough to avoid accident or sudden show more death. Gawande draws upon his medical background, experiences with end-of-life situations, research, and case studies to make a case for investigating what the patient wants rather than dispensing information and letting the patient decide, which is what is often done now. Some people value quality of life over taking extraordinary means to survive a short time longer, often at the cost of more pain and suffering.
The author makes a strong case for increasing individual freedoms in assisted living and nursing home arrangements, recommending earlier palliative care, and training doctors and other medical professionals in asking the right questions to help the patient make informed choices. He begins to discuss allowing individuals end-of-life decisions but does not go into much depth. Though it is obvious this book is written by a doctor, Gawande does a good job of avoiding medical jargon and explaining his perspective in straight-forward manner. He takes the subject matter to a personal level by sharing his father’s decline and eventual death, and how his family handled it. He advises holding those uncomfortable but necessary conversations with loved ones before a crisis arises.
I particularly liked the list of questions to ask in dealing with a terminal situation. I also appreciated learning more about hospice and that it is not solely related to imminent death, as is widely believed. Though it’s not pleasant to read about death and dying, this book contains valuable and pragmatic advice. I found it informative and worthwhile. show less
How can you not marvel at the human body? It's mysterious yet incredibly efficient, vulnerable but surprisingly resilient, rugged and delicate... it's a marvel and a mystery wrapped in an enigma. And yet Gawande and millions of others world-wide are tasked with keeping us all going for as long as possible, while (hopefully) allowing us to maintain a high quality of life.
In Better, Gawande takes us on a journey through the daily grind of medical professionals in situations as varied as show more dealing with blown-off limbs on the battlefield and delivering a baby in a parking lot. I've always admired those in the medical field, but after reading Better, I'm even more awed by what medical professionals do, often in adverse situations and with limited resources at hand.
I'm a big fan of Dr. Gawande. This is the second book I've read by him, and it won't be the last. I particularly appreciate his candidness in admitting his own shortcomings and reflecting on them. After holding a mirror up to himself, Gawande turns it on the medical world--and isn't afraid to reveal both its imperfections and its relentless pursuit of excellence.
What also struck me about this book is how universally applicable it is. Yes, it's about medicine, but the lessons delved into here are applicable to any profession. The themes of continuous improvement, ethical quandaries, and personal introspection are as relevant to an accountant or a lawyer as they are to a surgeon. "Better" is a perspective-changer. Whether you're in medicine, the arts, technology, or any other field, there's something in it for you. This is a book not just about being a better doctor, but about being a better human. show less
In Better, Gawande takes us on a journey through the daily grind of medical professionals in situations as varied as show more dealing with blown-off limbs on the battlefield and delivering a baby in a parking lot. I've always admired those in the medical field, but after reading Better, I'm even more awed by what medical professionals do, often in adverse situations and with limited resources at hand.
I'm a big fan of Dr. Gawande. This is the second book I've read by him, and it won't be the last. I particularly appreciate his candidness in admitting his own shortcomings and reflecting on them. After holding a mirror up to himself, Gawande turns it on the medical world--and isn't afraid to reveal both its imperfections and its relentless pursuit of excellence.
What also struck me about this book is how universally applicable it is. Yes, it's about medicine, but the lessons delved into here are applicable to any profession. The themes of continuous improvement, ethical quandaries, and personal introspection are as relevant to an accountant or a lawyer as they are to a surgeon. "Better" is a perspective-changer. Whether you're in medicine, the arts, technology, or any other field, there's something in it for you. This is a book not just about being a better doctor, but about being a better human. show less
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