Jerome Groopman Quotes & Sayings

Statistics cannot substitute for the human being before you; statistics embody averages, not individuals. — Jerome Groopman

Hope gives us the courage to confront our circumstances and the capacity to surmount them. — Jerome Groopman

To hope under the most extreme circumstances is an act of defiance that permits a person to live his life on his own terms. It is part of the human spirit to endure and give a miracle a chance to happen. — Jerome Groopman

Omniscience about life and death is not within a physician's purview. A doctor should never write off a person a priori. — Jerome Groopman

Help, then, is the ballast that keeps us steady, that recognizes where along the path are the dangers and pitfalls that can throw us off; hope tempers fear so we can recognize dangers and then bypass or endure them. — Jerome Groopman

True hope has no room for delusion. — Jerome Groopman

The freedom of patient speech is necessary if the doctor is to get clues about the medical enigma before him. If the patient is inhibited, or cut off prematurely, or constrained into one path of discussion, then the doctor may not be told something vital. Observers have noted that, on average, physicians interrupt patients within eighteen seconds of when they begin telling their story. — Jerome Groopman

Despite education and knowledge and experience, when you are the patient
suffering, confused, and despairing
it is very, very hard to take matters into your own hands. I was not a George Griffin, able to stand alone and challenge the prevailing assumptions. I needed an external voice, strong and determined, to guide me. — Jerome Groopman

Researchers are learning that a change in mind-set has the power to alter neurochemistry. Belief and expectation - the key elements of hope - can block pain by releasing the brain's endorphins and enkephalins, mimicking the effects of morphine. — Jerome Groopman

False hope can lead to intemperate choices and flawed decision making. True hope takes into account the real threats that exist and seeks to navigate the best path around them. — Jerome Groopman

This is the vicious cycle. When we feel pain from our physical debility, that pain amplifies our sense of hopelessness; the less hopeful we feel, the fewer endorphins and enkephalins and the more CCK we release. The more pain we experience due to these neurochemicals, the less able we are to feel hope. — Jerome Groopman

Many years before when I had serious back pain from a sports injury, the surgeons said they would explore my spine and "figure it out." Out of frustration I had impulsively opted for the procedure. They ended up fusing the vertebrae. It left me debilitated. In hindsight, I blamed myself more than the surgeons. I had pressed them for a solution when in fact none was apparent because the cause of the pain was obscure. — Jerome Groopman

I had learned that every patient has the right to hope, despite long odds, and it was my role to help nurture that hope. — Jerome Groopman

True hope is cleareyed. It sees all the difficulties that exist and all the potential for failure, but through that carves a realistic path to a better future. — Jerome Groopman

I feel that I have to do everything better just to be judged as okay. It is something I wish I could let go of. It's something that I wish just wasn't there. — Jerome Groopman

Certainly the primary imperative of a physician is to be skilled in medical science, but if he or she does not probe a patient's soul, then the doctor's care is given without caring, and part of the sacred mission of healing is missing. — Jerome Groopman

A book is an experiment, and as with all experiments, there is a sense of uncertainty about how it will turn out. — Jerome Groopman

Hope differs from optimism. Hope does not arise from being told to "think positively," or from hearing an overly rosy forecast. Hope, unlike optimism, is rooted in unalloyed reality. — Jerome Groopman

Hope can be imagined as a domino effect, a chain reaction, each increment making the next increase more feasible ... There are moments of fear and doubt that can deflate it. — Jerome Groopman

Hope is the elevating feeling we experience when we see - in the mind's eye - a path to a better future. — Jerome Groopman

This skewing of physicians' thinking leads to poor care. What is remarkable is not merely the consequences of a doctor's negative emotions. Despite research showing that most patients pickup on the physician's negativity, few of them understand its effect on their medical care and rarely change doctors because of it. — Jerome Groopman

Understanding statistics about the risks and benefits of a treatment is called "health literacy." It — Jerome Groopman

Hope, true hope, has proved as important as any medication I might prescribe or any procedure I might perform. — Jerome Groopman

To taking an action that could make life even worse. Psychologists call this "loss aversion." Research in cognitive — Jerome Groopman

It took more than science to make hope real. — Jerome Groopman

Hope is one of our central emotions, but we are often at a loss when asked to define it. Many of us confuse hope with optimism, a prevailing attitude that "things turn out for the best." But hope differs from optimism. Hope does not arise from being told to "Think Positively," or from hearing an overly rosy forecast. Hope, unlike optimism, is rooted in unalloyed reality. Although there is no uniform definition of hope, I found on that seemed to capture what my patients had taught me. Hope is the elevating feeling we experience when we see - in the mind's eye- a path to a better future. Hope acknowledges the significant obstacles and deep pitfalls along that path. True hope has no room for delusion. — Jerome Groopman

Suffered muscle pain, the most common side effect of statins, or someone else who developed liver toxicity and gastrointestinal upset, which are less common — Jerome Groopman

Also risks of taking statins. To be sure, seeing a person in front of you has a greater impact than hearing about side effects secondhand. But even secondhand stories affect the way people think. We have also observed in — Jerome Groopman

Even when there is no longer hope for the body, there is always hope for the soul. — Jerome Groopman

The cerebral processing of that visceral input as a signal of death was accurate. Without the kinds of therapy that had been developed over the decades, this cancer would have been fatal. Hope, then, is constructed not just from rational deliberation, from the conscious weighing of information; it arises as an amalgam of thought and feeling, the feelings created in part by neural input from the organs and tissues. — Jerome Groopman