NARROW SPECIALTIES.

NARROW SPECIALTIES. Druin Burch had a good review of BETTER, a book about surgery by Atul Gawande, in the Times Literary Supplement for October 5. Gawande points out the enormous difference that being 99% successful rather than 99.5% successful makes in medicine. Gawande in his book COMPLICATIONS asked a surgeon who had chosen to do only hernia surgeries about boredom. Burch quotes Gawande that the man’s reply, “‘Perfection is the excitement,'” was delivered “in a Spock-like voice.” Evidence seems to be that the more experienced a surgeon has with an operation, the better he is at it. I posted here that there is sometimes a trade off between doing a job that is interesting and doing a job that society values more (as reflected in how much money society will pay somebody for doing it). Specializing in repetitive work can be an example of this.