More than a few recent twists and turns have led me to the discovery of the brilliance of Dr Atul Gawande, and I find myself with a purist addiction to his words. I will, I promise, elaborate more on the path that led me to this incredible surgeon and gifted public health physician (yes! it's possible! it exists!), but for now I will leave you with this thought.
Today as I was assisting on a simple excision of a skin lesion at Ears, Nose & Throat Clinic, as I watched the surgeon perform facial plastics under local anaesthetic -- each cut comprehensively thought out, each suture made with such precision and care -- I found myself unable to contain a smile as I recalled a scene from Dr Gawande's book:
"Many surgeons elsewhere use Shouldice's distinctive repair method but obtain ordinary rates of recurrence. It's not the technique alone that makes Shouldice great. The doctors at Shouldice deliver hernia repairs the way Intel makes chips: they like to call themselves a "focused factory."... I asked Byrnes Shouldice, a son of the clinic's founder and a hernia surgeon himself, whether he ever got bored doing hernias all day long. 'No,' he said in a Spock-like voice. 'Perfection is the excitement.'"
YES. Perfection is the excitement.
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