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It has been a while since I read this but i remember it bringing back memories. Residency is a very trying time. I enjoyed his description of the tried and true "see one, do one, teach one" method that is still applied today.

I thought the book was thought provoking, funny, insightful and overall a good read. I am not sure how well it translated to people that are non-medical though.

Having some background in medical librarianship (and being constantly reminded of the focus on evidence-based medicine), I was particularly interested in the author's comments on intuition in medicine and how it can sometimes save a patient's life. For example, in his story about the girl with flesh-eating bacteria, Gawande is completely aware that statistically it is most likely that the girl has a common infection. However, based on his recent experience with a patient with the disease, he makes the decision to perform a biopsy on a young woman's leg, a procedure that he supposes may be completely unnecessary. In the end, the woman does have flesh-eating bacteria and her doctors save her leg and her life. Gawande asks the question, "How many ways could this have gone wrong?" Most doctors with no experience with the rare disease probably would have assumed it to be a simple infection and the girl would have lost her leg or died. Had the patient been an elderly man rather than a young woman the doctors may not have worked so hard to avoid amputation. If a few calculations had been worked, it might have been found that the likelihood of her having the disease was far outweighed by the likelihood of surgical complications and the biopsy wouldn't have been performed.

I like that Gawande discusses the deeper issues within medicine. The layman may not know anything about surgery or even what a biopsy is, but the author allows us to see the big picture in a way we've never thought of before.

Finally got a chance to read the book -- it was a good overview especially for a medical layman like myself. And he admirably succeeds in portraying the human side of surgeons.

I found myself wanting more out of certain chapters, such as the one on autopsies, which I felt could have had more detail about the actual procedure, how pathologists learn from the procedure, more of the ethical questions that families and doctors face, etc. The book reads too much like a series of articles than what I was expecting, though I'm impressed that Gawande has time for his surgery, family, and writing!