Book info

• Title Complications
• Author Atul Gawande
• Year 2013
• Genre Non-fiction

In these gripping accounts of true cases, bestselling author Atul Gawande performs exploratory surgery on medicine itself, laying bare a science not in its idealised form, but as it actually is - complicated, perplexing and profoundly human. This is a stunningly well-written account of the life of a surgeon: what it is like to cut into people's bodies and the terrifying - literally life and death - decisions that have to be made: operations that go wrong; of doctors who go to the bad; why autopsies are necessary; what it feels like to insert your knife into someone.

Thoughts

Rather than the “this is my job, read all about it” memoirs, this book takes more of an explorative look at the world of being a top notch surgeon. It embraces the fact that medicine is a subject for which there is no end - that we are always learning and growing and developing as a society, and that we shouldn’t blame doctors for not always having the right answer.

It’s an interesting, if slightly scary, read, because you want to put your trust in the doctors who hold your life in their hands, and it’s easy to forget that they are just people like you and me. But at the same time, there’s some glimpses of hope scattered throughout the book - particularly the story about Eleanor, where she was not just dismissed with antibiotics, and it wasn’t just decided to amputate straight away.

I think this is worth everyone reading, assuming you can deal with some of the more gory details, because it’s a good reminder that medicine is a benefit but isn’t always the answer to everything.

Rating: 3 / 5