You're listening to a special archive presentation of TED Talks Daily.

This talk features surgeon, writer, and public health innovator, Atul Gawande, recorded live at TED 2017.

I don't come to you today as an expert.

I come to you as someone who has been really interested

in how I get better at what I do and how we all do.

I think it's not just how good you are now,

I think it's how good you're going to be that really matters.

I was visiting this birth center in the north of India.

I was watching the birth attendants, and I realized I was witnessing in them in the north of India, I was watching the birth attendance,

and I realized I was witnessing in them,

in extreme form, this very struggle,

which is how people improve in the face of complexity,

or don't.

The women here are delivering in a region

where the typical birth center has a one-and-twenty death rate

for the babies, and the moms are dying at a rate 10 times higher than they do elsewhere.

Now, we've known the critical practices that stop the big killers in birth for decades.

And the thing about it is that even in this place,

in this place especially,

the simplest things are not simple.

We know, for example, you should wash hands

and put on clean gloves.

...