Quotes & Sayings About Doctor And Patient

It seems that part of the moral constitution of a doctor is a commitment not to intend the death of a patient, and to protect them from harm. — David Jeffrey

I have an obligation to use what I know to try to bring real, usable medical science to every doctor and bedside and patient. — Patrick Soon-Shiong

I'll never forget reading Chekhov's "A Doctor's Visit" on a train to Hawthorne, New York, and I got to the end - the scene where the patient says goodbye to the doctor and she puts a flower in her hair as a kind of thank you to him - and I felt like a cowboy shot from a canyon's top. This is a different experience from reading a novel, I think. The emotional effect is cumulative. Let's just hope market forces don't send short fiction the way of the dinosaur, because their sales are paltry compared to the novel and this is truly unfortunate. — Adam Ross

In the European Union, the relationship between politicians and the fishing industry has become like that of a doctor assisting the suicide of a patient. — Callum Roberts

When we go to our meeting with God, we should go like a patient to his doctor, first to be thoroughly examined and afterwards to be treated for our ailment. Then something will happen when you pray. — Ole Hallesby

Of the thousands of patients I have seen, only two or three have ever claimed to be unhappy: all the rest have said that they were depressed. This semantic shift is deeply significant, for it implies that dissatisfaction with life is itself pathological, a medical condition, which it is the responsibility of the doctor to alleviate by medical means. Everyone has a right to health; depression is unhealthy; therefore everyone has a right to be happy (the opposite of being depressed). This idea in turn implies that one's state of mind, or one's mood, is or should be independent of the way that one lives one's life, a belief that must deprive human existence of all meaning, radically disconnecting reward from conduct. A ridiculous pas de deux between doctor and patient ensues: the patient pretends to be ill, and the doctor pretends to cure him. In the process, the patient is wilfully blinded to the conduct that inevitably causes his misery in the first place. — Theodore Dalrymple

Why are you so afraid of the word 'Fascism,' Doremus? Just a word - just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours - not so worse to have a real Strong Man, like Hitler or Mussolini - like Napoleon or Bismarck in the good old days - and have 'em really run the country and make it efficient and prosperous again. 'Nother words, have a doctor who won't take any back-chat, but really boss the patient and make him get well whether he likes it or not! — Sinclair Lewis

women were considered instinctual nurses in this generation - the field had received exciting publicity during the Spanish-American War when an Army Nursing Corps had served overseas in the Philippines. Clara Weeks-Shaw, the author of a popular textbook on nursing, promoted the field as "a new activity for women - congenial, honorable and remunerative and with permanent value to them in the common experience of domestic life."3 In readable language, Weeks-Shaw presented nursing as an artful balance between self-reliance and submission. Overall its practices were an extension of maternity, requiring the classic female behaviors of cheerfulness (to the patients) and obedience (to the doctors). "Never leave a doctor alone with a gynecology patient except at his request," went one injunction. — Jean H. Baker

When she'd finished, she cut the thread with a pair of scissors, patted the wound once more and stepped back. "Better."
"No bandage?"
She shook her head. "No bandage. Need air."
"All right. I guess you're the doctor." He grabbed her hand and pulled her onto his lap. Even in the midst of inflicting pain she'd aroused his lust. "Don't I get a reward for being a good patient?"
"I don't understand." She delivered the all-purpose phrase he'd taught her.
"Reward. A kiss."
The grooves in her cheeks flashed as her lips turned up. "Yes, you need a kiss." And she bent her head to give him one. — Bonnie Dee

I tell [medical students] that they are the luckiest persons on earth to be in medical school, and to forget all this worry about H.M.O.'s and keep your eye on helping the patient. It's the best time ever to be a doctor because you can heal and treat conditions that were untreatable even a couple of years ago. — Joseph Murray

Let no one suppose that the words doctor and patient can disguise from the parties the fact that they are employer and employee. — George Bernard Shaw

Occult Medicine is essentially sympathetic. Reciprocal affection, or at least real goodwill, must exist between doctor and patient. Syrups and juleps have very little inherent virtue; they are what they become through the mutual opinion of operator and subject; hence homoeopathic medicine dispenses with them and no serious inconvenience follows. — Eliphas Levi

What if you were a doctor and had a patient who demanded that you stop all the silly hand-washing in preparation for surgery because it was taking too much time? 2 Clearly the patient is the boss; and yet the doctor should absolutely refuse to comply. Why? Because the doctor knows more than the patient about the risks of disease and infection. It would be unprofessional (never mind criminal) for the doctor to comply with the patient. So too it is unprofessional for programmers to bend to the will of managers who don't understand the risks of making messes. — Anonymous

Hello, old friend. And here we are. You and me, on the last page. By the time you read these words, Rory and I will be long gone. So know that we lived well and were very happy. And above all else, know that we will love you always. Sometimes I do worry about you though. I think once we're gone you won't be coming back here for awhile. And you might be alone. Which you should never be. Don't be alone, Doctor. And do one more thing for me. There's a little girl waiting in a garden. She's going to wait a long while, so she's going to need a lot of hope. Go to her. Tell her a story. Tell her that if she's patient, the days are coming that she'll never forget. Tell her she'll go to see and fight pirates. She'll fall in love with a man who'll wait two thousand years to keep her safe. Tell her she'll give hope to the greatest painter who ever lived. And save a whale in outer space. Tell her, this is the story of Amelia Pond. And this is how it ends. — Steven Moffat

Dr. Xia was working as a salaried doctor attached to another man's medicine shop, which did not give him much chance to display his skill. But he worked had, and gradually his reputation began to grow. Soon he was invited to go on his first visit to a patient's home. When he came back that evening he was carrying a package wrapped in a cloth. He winked at my mother and his wife and asked them to guess what was inside the package. My mother's eyes was glued to the steaming bundle, and even before she could shout out "Steamed rolls!" she was already tearing the package open. As she was devouring the rolls, she looked up and met Dr. Xia's twinkling eyes. More than fifty years later she can still remember his look of happiness, and even today she says she can remember any food as delicious as those simple wheat rolls. — Jung Chang

I'm glad you came here and got the help you needed, Neil says, and he shakes my hand in that way that people do in here to remind themselves that you're the patient and they're the doctor/volunteer/ employee. They like you, and they genuinely want you to do better, but when they shake your hand you feel that distance, that slight disconnect because they know that you're still broken somewhere, that you might snap at any moment. — Ned Vizzini

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse? WITNESS: No. ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure? WITNESS: No. ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing? WITNESS: No. ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy? WITNESS: No. ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor? WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar. ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless? WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law. ***** — Krisanta Bella

A patient suffering with cancer of the throat was informed of a new X-ray machine that would cure his condition. This man could neither read nor write, nor was he informed about any of the instruments or procedures of medical practice. When he first sat down in the doctor's office and received into his mouth a thermometer with which the doctor sought to take his temperature, he believed he was undergoing X-ray treatment. The doctor, alert to the practices of psychology, recognized this, and after leaving the thermometer in the patient's mouth for ten minutes, excused him and told him to return in two days. Three weeks of treatment with a thermometer cured this patient's cancerous condition! Obviously, it wasn't the thermometer that did it. It was Faith! — Uell S. Andersen

I could teach an eighth-grader in twenty minutes how to brief a case. Yet for all three years in most law schools the casebook method of learning the law is still in. The matriculating young lawyer is as qualified to represent a client with the education he has suffered through as a doctor who has never seen a patient, who has never held a scalpel in his hand and who learns surgery by having read text books about it and becomes skilled in surgery, if ever, after having stacked up piles of corpses who represent his pathetic learning process. — Gerry Spence

One such troubling provision is a tax increase to pay for the $635 billion included in the budget for health care 'reserve funds.' Health care reform is desperately needed in America, but I'm concerned that $635 billion will be a down payment on socialized medicine, causing the impersonal rationing of health care and destroying the doctor-patient relationship. — Paul Broun

I always feel like a doctor who loses a patient on the operating table or something where I felt just devastated and I beat myself up until I get to try it the next night and "I'll get it better tonight." So I'm hard on myself. I think I'm not alone in that regard with acting. — Allison Janney

I have stood on the front lines of the health care system as a doctor, patient and concerned parent. Those experiences have served as my guideposts throughout the struggle to reform America's health care system. And it's those same experiences that tell me that fear and election hysteria should not overshadow the reality of reform. — Jim McDermott

even when a political truth is enshrined in written documents, it is seldom that these have any more value than a radiographic plate on which the layman imagines that the patient's disease is inscribed in so many words, whereas in fact the plate furnishes simply one piece of material for study, to be combined with a number of others on which the doctor's reasoning powers will be brought to bear and on which he will base his diagnosis. — Marcel Proust

I think people are by-and-large happy with the providers that they have got now. They treasure that doctor-patient relationship. — Bob McDonnell

The term informed consent first appeared in court documents in 1957, in a civil court ruling on the case of a patient named Martin Salgo. He went under anesthesia for what he thought was a routine procedure and woke up permanently paralyzed from the waist down. The doctor hadn't told him the procedure carried any risks at all. The — Rebecca Skloot

The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his (sic)patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease — Thomas Jefferson

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

In medicine, we have invented an entirely new healing paradigm. Now we no longer simply look to the doctor and to medicine to heal us. We now recognize what has been substantiated scientifically everywhere from Harvard to Duke to Stanford - that the power of the mental and spiritual consciousness of the patient is as significant in healing as physical factors are. If we apply that same paradigm to politics, we see that the mind and the spiritual consciousness of the citizen are every bit as important as anything that goes on in the government. — Marianne Williamson

...that the doctor being himself a mortal man, should be diligent and tender in relieving his suffering patients, inasmuch as he himself must one day be a like sufferer. — Thomas Sydenham

I always think that if you deal with extremely emotional, even melodramatic, subject matter, as I constantly do, the best way to handle those situations is at a sufficient remove. It's like a doctor and a nurse and a casualty situation. You can't help the patient and you can't help yourself by emoting. And I don't think cinema is intended for therapy, so I object also to that huge, massive manipulation which is perpetrated on the public. — Peter Greenaway

The doctor says to the patient, "Take your clothes off and stick your tongue out the window". "What will that do" asks the patient. The doctor says "I'm mad at my neighbor!". — Henny Youngman

Did any of you ever see Doctor Tetrazzini perform? I say perform advisedly because his operations were performances. He would start by throwing a scalpel across the room into the patient and then make his entrance as a ballet dancer. His speed was incredible: "I don't give them time to die", he would say. Tumors put him in a frenzy of rage. "Fucking undisciplined cells!" he would snarl, advancing on the tumor like a knife-fighter. — William S. Burroughs

My father's concern for his patients was only enhanced by the fact that so many of them had a personal connection to him...In the words of the historian David J. Rothman, 'doctor and patient occupied the same social space,' promoting a shared relationship. Meanwhile, the poor and minority patients my dad met for the first time at the Mount Sinai--including many he would then follow for years--got the same royal treatment...His goal was to 'take extra pains with the service patients, to be certain they are reassured and confident in your care, and come to believe that you really care about him or her as an individual.' One way he did this was to take advantage of his flexible schedule. 'It's so simple,' he wrote, 'to make an extra visit in the afternoon for these special cases, come back to report a new lab test result, review an X-ray [or] reassure that the scheduled test is necessary, important and will lead to some conclusive information.' Illness, he underscored, was 'frightening. — Barron H. Lerner

Now doctors access patient messages via a mobile or Web application, and the message automatically becomes part of a conversation. Under the new system, the whole care team is aware of what is happening, and the doctor has the patient's history available when fielding questions. — Anonymous

[the doctor] clicked by mistake on the notes of a patient she'd got to know well - too well. The unfortunate Mrs. Swayne had become unhealthily doctor-dependent. But had she grasped the nettle? Had she actually finally and against all predictions left the country? — Jane Wilson-Howarth

A patient complains of feeling nervous or fearful. These feelings and behaviors suggest that the patient has an anxiety disorder, and the doctor prescribes whatever drug will most probably work for an anxiety disorder. However, there's no conclusive way to tell that this patient definitely has an anxiety disorder. Even if the doctor did get the diagnosis correct, there's a great deal of variation regarding which drug class (for example, anti-anxiety drugs versus antidepressants) a particular individual will respond to and which drug within a class (for example, Prozac versus Zoloft) will work best. If the drug doesn't work, the doctor will try the next one on the list and so on, thus delaying treatment success and complicating the process with the mix-and-match type of treatment. — Chris Prentiss

Before asserting a prognosis on any patient, always be objective and never subjective. For telling a man that he will win the treasure of life, but then later discovering that he will lose, will harm him more than by telling him that he may lose, but then he wins. — Suzy Kassem

My old professor, meanwhile, was stunned by the normalcy of the day around him. Shouldn't the world stop? Don't they know what has happened to me?
But the world did not stop, it took no notice at all

Morrie's doctors guessed he had two years left. Morrie knew it was less.
But my old professor had made a profound decision, one he began to construct the day he came out of the doctor's office with a sword hanging over his head. Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left? he had asked himself.
He would not wither. He would not be ashamed of dying.
Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? He could be research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me.
Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip. — Mitch Albom

In this land of unlimited opportunity, a place where, to paraphrase Woody Allen, any man or woman can realize greatness as a patient or as a doctor, we have only one commercial American filmmaker who consistently speaks with his own voice. That is Woody Allen, gag writer, musician, humorist, philosopher, playwright, stand-up comic, film star, film writer and film director. — Vincent Canby

What a doctor or healer tells you is a reflection of the beliefs and expectations you hold. Change your beliefs and you change the prognosis. Who is the doctor? The mind of the patient. — Alan Cohen

You learn it when you become a doctor. Not in school - that isn't where you learn, in any case - but when you lay your hands on people and presume to heal them. There are so many there, beyond your reach. So many you can never touch, so many whose essence you can't find, so many who slip through your fingers. But you can't think about them. The only thing you can do - the only thing - is to try for the one who's in front of you. Act as though this one patient is the only person in the world - because to do otherwise is to lose that one, too. One at a time, that's all you can do. And you learn not to despair over all the ones you can't help, but only to do what you can." She — Diana Gabaldon

I hate those TV shows where characters talk about one thing, such as their patient on the operation table (let's say they're a doctor), then you realize they're actually talking about actually talking about themselves. The patient's open-heart surgery is nothing compared to their own messed-up heart or whatever. It's selfish. And means they're not concentrating, which is medical negligence. — Jaclyn Moriarty

The punishment should fit the crime and if a doctor or drug company does harm knowingly or negligently to a patient they should be compensated to make them whole. — Corrine Brown

I think if the doctor is a good doctor and has a patient's best interest in mind then he's not going to allow anything to compromise that patient's care. The bottom line is the doctor has to care for his patient. You have to have that overwhelming sense of welfare for your patient. — Charles Teo

I thought back to med school, when a patient had told me that she always wore her most expensive socks to the doctor's office, so that when she was in a patient's gown and shoeless, the doctor would see the socks and know she was a person of substance, to be treated with respect. (Ah, there's the problem - I was wearing hospital-issue socks, which I had been stealing for years! — Paul Kalanithi

The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account. — David Ogilvy

The key is to cut out the middleman and empower both doctor and patient with information about what things cost. — Ben Carson

Ronkers was getting out of the elevator on the first floor when the intercom paged 'Dr Heart'. There was no Dr Heart at University Hospital. 'Dr Heart' meant someone's heart had stopped.
'Dr Heart?' the intercom asked sweetly. 'Please come to 304 ... '
Any doctor in the hospital was supposed to hurry to that room. There was an unwritten rule that you looked around and made a slow move to the nearest elevator, hoping another doctor would beat you to the patient. Ronkers hesitated, letting the elevator door close. He pushed the button again, but the elevator was already moving up.
'Dr Heart, room 304,' the intercom said calmly. It was better than urgently crying, 'A doctor! Any doctor to room 304! Oh my God, hurry!' That might disturb the other patients and the visitors. — John Irving

The fears are unanimous. ObamaCare is too expensive. It is a government takeover of our healthcare system. Services will be diminished. The patient-doctor relationship will be eliminated. It will not make healthcare more affordable. And it will bankrupt small businesses. — Joseph M. Kyrillos

Within every patient there resides a doctor, and we as physicians are at our best when we we put our patients in touch with the doctor inside themselves. — Albert Schweitzer

He rested his head on top of mine and whispered, "I'm warning you now. I'm a horrible patient."
I smiled in spite of myself and pulled back. "Of course you are. That's why you're a doctor. — Lisa Kessler

God bless the physician who warms the speculum or holds your hand and looks into your eyes. Perhaps one subtext of the health caredebate is a yen to be treated like a whole person, not just an eye, an ear, a nose or a throat. A yen to be human again, on the part of patient and doctor alike. — Anna Quindlen

It would seem peculiar, or perverse, within an Aristotelian framework of efficient causation to allege that 'Any thing may produce any thing. ' Although a doctor doctoring a patient might produce healing in a patient, the doctor doctoring will not eventuate in a fence's being made white; nor will a painter's painting bring about a beach tree's shedding its leaves. A properly specified efficient cause, in Aristotle's terms, carries with it an explanation of why some motion or change was initiated, and does so in such a way as to make perspicuous the connection between the activity in the agent and the alteration in the patient. — Anonymous

As for the prayers, I suppose they can't hurt. I've never found much good in them, I'll confess that here, though I keep such thoughts private when in public company. Who would confide in a physician who claimed no affiliation with God? I still must feed myself, and keep my house. I still need my patients. But too many people believe with too much conviction in what amounts to, at best, a superstition.
I've seen science change a patient's diagnosis, but I've never heard a prayer that changed God's mind about a damn thing.. — Cherie Priest

[The doctor] peeked into the trauma room and saw the situation: the clerk - that is, me - standing next to the orderly, Georgie, both of us on drugs, looking down at a patient with a knife sticking up out of his face.
'What seems to be the trouble?' he asked. — Denis Johnson

A man like Kappler might become angriest, most detached, even sickest at those times his psychiatrist edges closest to the truths about his life. The rage and even the psychosis has to be seen for what it is: the flamethrower of a fortress under siege. Pleasantries, humor, and easy exchanges might be clues that no real work is being done.
There can be no retreat on the psychiatrist's part. One patient with a psychotic illness has written: "the doctor has to feel sure he has the right to break into the illness, just as a parent knows he has the right to walk into a baby's room, no matter what the baby feels about it. The doctor has to know he's doing the right thing ... some people go through life with vomit on their lips. You can feel their terrible hunger but they defy you to feed them." (95, The Strange Case of Dr. Kappler) — Keith Ablow

When Rita asked Tabin to change places with her and operate on the next patient, he did his best to impress her, but the first incision with the point of his blade brought a grunt of disapproval.
'Try not to jab at the patient like you're killing a pig,' Rita said. 'Let your hand widen the wound gently.'
Tabin pictured the way fencers held their foils as they sized up opponents, swaying gently side to side, and attempted to send that image to receptors in the fine muscles of his fingers, so that they enlarged the opening one delicate cut at a time.
'Much better, Doctor Geoff,' Rita said. 'If you keep this up, you'll hardly blind anybody. — David Oliver Relin

A Medical Affair is more than compelling fiction. It also is a powerful narrative about how relationships between physicians and patients can evolve in unethical, even unlawful ways. And as a medical ethicist and educator, I was delighted to see Strauss deftly weave important information about sexual misconduct by physicians into her story line."
David Orentlicher
Professor of law, medicine and ethics at Indiana University. Oversaw drafting of American Medical Association's ethical guidelines on intimate relationships between physicians and their patients — Anne McCarthy Strauss

When I took the Hippocratic oath and was effectively 'sworn in' as a doctor, I took the same vow that doctors have taken for generations. Patient autonomy is core to this oath. — Ami Bera

Struggle toward the capital-T Truth, but recognize that the task is impossible - or that if a correct answer is possible, verification certainly is impossible.
In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth. Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete. And Truth comes somewhere above all of them, where, as at the end of that Sunday's reading;
the sower and reaper can rejoice together. For here the saying is verified that "One sows and another reaps." I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of their work. — Paul Kalanithi

Doctor: I have some good news and some bad news. Patient: What's the good news? Doctor: The tests you took showed that you have twenty-four hours to live. Patient:That's the good news? What's the bad news? Doctor: I forgot to call you yesterday. — Thomas Cathcart

Sit in a quiet place and meditate in imagination that body is no more bondage to you, that it is your machine for your work of life, that you are not flesh, that you are the governor of it, that you can use it at pleasure, and that it always obeys your order faithfully. Imagine body as separated from you. When it cries out, stop it instantly, as a mother does her baby. When it disobeys you, correct it by discipline, as a master does his pupil. When it is wanton, tame it down, as a horse-breaker does his wild horse. When it is sick, prescribe to it, as a doctor does to his patient. Imagine that you are not a bit injured, even if it streams blood; that you are entirely safe, even if it is drowned in water or burned by fire. E-Shun, — Kaiten Nukariya

Many medical students, like most American patients, confuse science and technology. They think that what it means to be a scientific doctor is to bring to bear the maximum amount of technology on any given patient. And this makes them dangerous. — Alice Dreger

The doctor, if he forgets he is only the assistant to nature and zealously takes over the stage, may so add to what nature is already doing well that he actually throws the patient into shock by the vigour he adds to nature's forces. — Herbert Ratner

In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth. Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete. And Truth comes somewhere above all of them, where, — Paul Kalanithi

When two people become entangled, one person will conform to the energy of the other person. When one of them is a healer whose cells are vibrating at a higher level, the client's cells become entangled, and their energy is lifted. That's why that old saying, "physician heal thyself," is so important, even though most don't understand it: If the physician's energy is going to influence or, in scientific terms, "entrain" the patient's, the doctor's must be higher. — Bruce H. Lipton

Testing stools for C. diff in patients after they have finished their Flagyl or Vanco for 10 days and after their bowel movements have returned to normal (that is, formed and not watery) is a waste of time and money, and is not helpful to the doctor or patient. — J. Thomas LaMont

I don't want anybody between a doctor and a patient - not an insurance company bureaucrat or a Washington bureaucrat. — John Barrasso

I've always been interested in medicine and was pleased when my brother became a doctor. But after thinking seriously about that field, I realized that what intrigued me was not the science, not the chemistry or biology of medicine, but the narrative - the story of each patient, each illness. — Lois Lowry

Macbeth: How does your patient, doctor?
Doctor: Not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick-coming fancies that keep her from rest.
Macbeth: Cure her of that! Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon her heart.
Doctor: Therein the patient must minister to himself. — William Shakespeare

I cough. "Oh, doctor. I think I'm sick I need some penis-cilin." I fake cough again into my hand. "Poor patient. What will I ever do?" He shoots me a crooked smile and I begin to pant in torturous anticipation. — S.K. Logsdon

I grew up with a real appreciation about just how wonderful and intimate the relationship is between a doctor and a patient was and the sense that this was a noble profession. — Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey

We have Dragon [dictation software]," one primary care doctor said, "which you have to be careful of, because I just [dictated] 'Patient's prostate is bothering him' and it turned out 'Patient's prostitute is bothering him. — Robert Wachter

I'm speaking to you man to man," he said, "not doctor to patient. How much longer can you continue denying yourself? You can't live without warmth." "Warmth?" I said, sending him a 'shut up' message. "Yes. Sexual expression. David, you don't even masturbate." We were silent for at least a minute. My intrigues huddled within me like guerilla warriors, hiding behind other thoughts. Finally, I thought of something to say: "If we're going to talk man to man and not doctor to patient, then I don't think you should charge me for this hour. — Scott Spencer

Much has been said about the meanings we make of illness, but what about the meanings we make out of cure? Cure is complex, disorienting, a revisioning of the self, either subtle or stark. Cure is the new, strange planet, pressing in. The doctor could not have known. And that made me, as it does every patient, only more alone. — Lauren Slater

I really discovered I had thyroid disease by accident. My son was having some health concerns, and as I filled out his patient history I noticed I had a lot of similar symptoms. I mentioned it to the doctor, and he ran blood work and finally an ultrasound of my thyroid. — Kim Alexis

He said he was - this is exactly what he said - he said he was sitting at the table in the kitchen, all by himself, drinking a glass of ginger ale and eating saltines and reading 'Dombey and Son', and all of a sudden Jesus sat down in the other chair and asked if he could have a small glass of ginger ale. A small glass, mind you - that's exactly what he said. I mean he says things like that, and yet he thinks he's perfectly qualified to give me a lot of advice and stuff! I could just spit! I could! It's like being in a lunatic asylum and having another patient all dressed up as a doctor come over to you and start taking your pulse or something ... — J.D. Salinger

I had two primary cancers, which was pretty unusual. And when I got the second one, people told me such terrible bad-news stories, they instigated fears that weren't there in the first place. I do remember with such gratitude one doctor saying to me, 'Two primaries? That's nothing. I've seen a patient with six.' — Sam Taylor-Wood

Healthcare should be between the doctor and the patient. And if the doctor says something needs to be done, the government should guarantee it gets paid for. — Michael Moore

In psychology it is very important that the doctor should not strive to heal at all costs. One has to be exceedingly careful not to impose one's own will and conviction on the patient. You have to give him a certain amount of freedom. You can't wrest people away from their fate, just as in medicine you cannot cure a patient if nature means him to die. Sometimes it is really a question whether you are allowed to rescue a man from the fate he must undergo for the sake of his further development. — C. G. Jung

Why is it that God gets all the credit for the good stuff, but it's the doctor's fault when shit happens? When the patient comes through, it's always 'Thank God,' and when the patient dies, it's always blame the doctor. Just once in my life, just for the sheer fucking novelty of it, it would be nice if somebody blamed God when the patient dies, instead of me. — Mary Doria Russell

I am the candidate of tax cuts, repealing Obamacare, repealing Dodd-Frank, letting the markets work, coming up with patient-and-doctor-centered healthcare solutions instead of more big government - and just generally getting government off the backs of small businesses. — Wendy E. Long

He very word "patient" implies passivity and powerlessness. Me-teacher-you-dumbbell, or me-doctor-you-patient, or me-politician-you-voter, or any other paternalistic or maternalistic stay-in-your-place tradition will not pass muster with me. — Andrew Saul

Doctor(to patient): Give me your parent's number so that we can tell them what a bad boy you have been.

Patient(Confused, unwilling): You don't need to.

Doctor:Hospital Rules!!! And no matter how much i hate dead people, I hate Unpaid bills more — Durjoy Datta

It is inevitable that the doctor should be influenced to a certain extent and even that his nervous health should suffer. He quite literally 'takes over' the sufferings of his patient and shares them with him. For this reason he runs a risk - and must run it in the nature of things" (1946, p. 172, italics added). — Anonymous

What is odd, perhaps, is how the primacy of patient autonomy and informed consent over efficacy - which is what we're talking about here - was presumed, but not actively discussed within the medical profession. Although the authoritative and paternalistic reassurance of the Victorian doctor who 'blinds with science' is a thing of the past in medicine, the success of the alternative therapy movement - whose practitioners mislead, mystify and blind their patients with sciencey-sounding 'authoritative' explanations, like the most patronising Victorian doctor imaginable - suggests that there may still be a market for that kind of approach. — Ben Goldacre

Look at your life as a patient and a doctor! — Tae Yun Kim

So much is happening now; you must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like someone who is recovering; for perhaps you are both. And more: you are also the doctor, who has to watch over himself. But in every sickness there are many days when the doctor can do nothing but wait. And that is what you, insofar as you are your own doctor, must now do, more than
anything else. — Rainer Maria Rilke

People tend to forget they are patients. Once they leave the doctor's office or the hospital, they simply put it out of their minds. But you are all permanent patients, like it or not. I am the doctor, you the patient. Doctor doesn't cease being doctor at close of day. Neither should patient. People expect doctor to go about things with the utmost seriousness, skill and experience. But what about patient? How professional is he? — Don DeLillo

The medicalization of early diagnosis not only hampers and discourages preventative health-care but it also trains the patient-to-be to function in the meantime as an acolyte to his doctor. He learns to depend on the physician in sickness and in health. He turns into a life-long patient. — Ivan Illich

Note to self: being Kurt's son, being an ex-mental patient, getting into Harvard, having written a book, and being a doctor are all things that in and of themselves do not make a life. If you lean on them too hard, you'll find that there's not much there. But if you add up a lot of things that aren't in and of themselves enough, it almost starts to add up to something ... — Mark Vonnegut

The best colleague any doctor can have is a more fully informed patient and family. — James J. Rybacki

While someday the computerization of medicine will surely be that long-awaited "disruptive innovation," today it's often just plain disruptive: of the doctor-patient relationship, of clinicians' professional interactions and work flow, and of the way we measure and try to improve things. I — Robert Wachter

The integration of exponentially growing technologies is beginning to empower the patient, enable the doctor, enhance wellness and begin to cure the well before they get sick. — Daniel Kraft

The ordinary patient goes to his doctor because he is in pain or some other discomfort and wants to be comfortable again; he is not in pursuit of the ideal of health in any direct sense. The doctor on the other hand wants to discover the pathological condition and control it if he can. The two are thus to some degree at cross purposes from the first, and unless the affair is brought to an early and happy conclusion this diversion of aims is likely to become more and more serious as the case goes on. — Wilfred Trotter

There's such a void in the medical system. When my husband was sick, it became very apparent to me that the nurses were doing the doctor's job, and the doctors were doing the disease job, so no one was caring for the patient and the loved one. — Donna Karan

The core predicament of medicine - the thing that makes being a patient so wrenching, being a doctor so difficult, and being a part of society that pays the bills they run up so vexing - is uncertainty. With all that we know nowadays about people and diseases and how to diagnose and treat them, it can be hard to see this, hard to grasp how deeply uncertainty runs. As a doctor, you come to find, however, that the struggle in caring for people is more often with what you do not know than what you do. Medicine's ground state is uncertainty. And wisdom - for both the patients and doctors - is defined by how one copes with it. — Atul Gawande

As a medical doctor, it is my duty to evaluate the situation with as much data as I can gather and as much expertise as I have and as much experience as I have to determine whether or not the wish of the patient is medically justified. — Jack Kevorkian

Worries about the power of a doctor's suggestions to influence and shape his patient's mind, whether they are made under hypnosis or not, are still with us. — Siri Hustvedt

It is unsettling to find how little it takes to defeat success in medicine. You come as a professional equipped with expertise and technology. You do not imagine that a mere matter of etiquette could foil you. But the social dimension turns out to be as essential as the scientific
matters of how casual you should be, how formal, how reticent, how forthright. Also: how apologetic, how self-confident, how money-minded. In this work against sickness, we begin not with genetic or cellular interactions, but with human ones. They are what make medicine so complex and fascinating. How each interaction is negotiated can determine whether a doctor is trusted, whether a patient is heard, whether the right diagnosis is made, the right treatment given. But in this realm there are no perfect formulas. — Atul Gawande