More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
It’s rare, but patients with cancer undergoing major surgery are at risk, and if it happens there’s not much that can be done.
And too much potassium can stop the heart, as well—that’s how states execute prisoners.
“necessary fallibility”—some things we want to do are simply beyond our capacity.
The second type of failure the philosophers call ineptitude—because in these instances the knowledge exists, yet we fail to apply it correctly.
Careful studies have shown, for example, that heart attack patients undergoing cardiac balloon therapy should have it done within ninety minutes of arrival at a hospital. After that, survival falls off sharply.
two-thirds of death penalty cases are overturned because of errors?
the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us.
Clinicians now have at their disposal some six thousand drugs and four thousand medical and surgical procedures,
Fifty years ago, ICUs barely existed.
Americans today undergo an average of seven operations in their lifetime,
We continue to have upwards of 150,000 deaths following surgery every year—more than three times the number of road traffic fatalities. Moreover, research has consistently showed that at least half our deaths and major complications are avoidable.
In a complex environment, experts are up against two main difficulties. The first is the fallibility of human memory and attention, especially when it comes to mundane, routine matters that are easily overlooked
Faulty memory and distraction are a particular danger in what engineers call all-or-none processes: whether running to the store to buy ingredients for a cake, preparing an airplane for takeoff, or evaluating a sick person in the hospital, if you miss just one key thing, you might as well not have made the effort at all.
