In "Education of a Knife," for instance, Gawande begins writing as a novice anxiously learning from his chief resident how to insert a "central line." He lets us watch him nervously direct a "fat three-inch needle on a syringe" under the clavicle, insert the needle into the vena cava (the main blood vessel to the heart), widen the opening into the vein, and thread the catheter (the central line) into the blood vessel, all the while trying not to puncture the beating heart or the nearby lungs (p. Unlike many physicians' narratives, however, Gawande's essays do more than tell a doctor's story. Although many of these writings were published separately in The New Yorker and Slate, read together, the essays create a coherent vision of the complexities of practicing medicine Gawande sees with the fresh perceptions of a novice. His fourteen narrative essays, clustered into three sections, "Fallibility," "Mystery," and "Uncertainty," are model ethical interrogations of ordinary medical encounters. Literature and Medicine 21.2 (2002) 324-327Ītul Gawande's bravely self-reflexive, exquisitely candid, agilely argued book, published as he nears the end of his surgical residency, is remarkable.
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