NPR interviewed author-surgeon Atul Gawande about his latest medical essay collection, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance.
The essential premise of the twelve essays in this volume (some of which previously appeared in places like the New Yorker and the New England Journal of Medicine) is that good enough is not, in fact, good enough, and health-care providers have significant room for improvement.
In Better, Gawande writes: "At bottom, success comes out of a constant struggle between the details of how the world works and the character and ability of the people in it--out of the human struggle to do better. That is the subject of my book."
Purchase Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance at Powell's.