raleighnet.org

I might need to get a subscription to The New Yorker. I’ve never read it before, but they publish some great stories. I only recently discovered the writings of Malcolm Gladwell who is a regular contributor. Those are amazingly good.

And now, I’ve just read with fascination
Annals of Medicine — The Bell Curve, which is a story about different quality of care for different hospitals. It’s more varried than I ever would have imagined.

The hardest question for anyone who takes responsibility for what he or she does is, What if I turn out to be average? If we took all the surgeons at my level of experience, compared our results, and found that I am one of the worst, the answer would be easy: I’d turn in my scalpel. But what if I were a C? Working as I do in a city that’s mobbed with surgeons, how could I justify putting patients under the knife? I could tell myself, Someone’s got to be average. If the bell curve is a fact, then so is the reality that most doctors are going to be average. There is no shame in being one of them, right?

Link grabbed from here.