Culture Matters. Of Course, If Physicians Are

When We Lived In A Society Where We Had Large Families That Lived Together, Especially In Agricultural Societies Like My Grandfather And Father Grew Up In, The Result Is You Always Had Family Around To Take Care Of You.

Arriving At An Acceptance Of One's Mortality Is A Process, Not An Epiphany.

We've Created A Multitrillion-dollar Edifice For Dispensing The Medical Equivalent Of Lottery Tickets - And Have Only The Rudiments Of A System To Prepare Patients For The Near Certainty That Those Tickets Will Not Win. Hope Is Not A Plan, But Hope Is Our Plan.

Good Checklists, On The Other Hand Are Precise. They Are Efficient, To The Point, And Easy To Use Even In The Most Difficult Situations. They Do Not Try To Spell Out Everything--a Checklist Cannot Fly A Plane. Instead, They Provide Reminders Of Only The Most Critical And Important Steps--the Ones That Even The Highly Skilled Professional Using Them Could Miss. Good Checklists Are, Above All, Practical.

In One Study, Old People Assigned To A Geriatrics Team Stayed Independent For Far Longer, And Were Admitted To The Hospital Less.