Atul Gawande

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Dr. Gawande is a physician and journalist who specializes in reducing error, improving safety and increasing efficiency in surgery. He is also a Professor of surgery at the Harvard Medical School and Department of Health Policy and Management. Much of his work has examined error in surgery, establishing its frequency and seriousness and revealing underlying mechanisms. Ongoing work ranges from observation research on performance and safety in the operating room to studies of medical malpractice claims to the development of technologies to prevent surgeons from inadvertently leaving sponges or instruments in patients. A newer area of research concerns the current state of care in developing countries for illness requiring surgery or other high technology interventions.

In addition, Dr. Gawande writes the Notes of a Surgeon column for the New England Journal of Medicine and has been a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine since 1998. Dr. Gawande earned his M.A. from Stanford University, his M.A. from Oxford University and both his M.D. and M.P.H from Harvard School of Public Health.