In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments-which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human….

If we took away the ability to put defibrillators in people in their last years, people would be shouting in the streets..

Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts t….

Good checklists, on the other hand are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not ….

I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn't one of them..

Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to….

Man is fallible, but maybe men are less so..

The evidence is that people who enter hospice don't have shorter lives. In many cases they are longer..

Having great components is not enough, and yet we've been obsessed in medicine with components. We want the best drugs, the best technologies, the be….

Courage is strength in the face of knowledge of what is to be feared or hoped. Wisdom is prudent strength..

And in stories, endings matter..

You know, 97 percent of the time, if you come into a hospital, everything goes well. But three percent of the time, we have major complications..

What is the alternative to understanding the complexity of the world?.

In one study, old people assigned to a geriatrics team stayed independent for far longer, and were admitted to the hospital less..

The definition of what it means to be dying has changed radically. We are able to extend people's lives considerably, including sometimes, good days..

What is needed, however, isn't just that people working together be nice to each other. It is discipline. Discipline is hard--harder than trustworthi….

In many ways, the effort to study philosophy was my rebellion away from medicine. I'm the son of two Indian immigrant physicians, so the natural path….

I chose surgery because I thought that perhaps this would make me more like the kind of person I wanted to be..

The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one's life..

Culture matters. Of course, if physicians are rewarded or penalized for their service and results, the culture will change. But the key values we doc….

There are times when you have sharp elbows, and people are trying to muscle you out of certain meetings - because then people could leak to the press….