Patients Care Quotes & Sayings

When you think of the costs of cancer care, one can imagine that drugs like checkpoint blockers or transfer of these T lymphocytes are actually cost-saving, just as treatments for hepatitis C, while expensive, overall save money by preventing hepatitis and hep - hepatocarcinoma in patients. — Laurie Glimcher

The current lack of a national standard for operators of medical imaging and radiation therapy equipment poses a hazard to American patients and jeopardizes quality health care. — Charles W. Pickering

There are more than 9,000 billing codes for individual procedures and units of care. But there is not a single billing code for patient adherence or improvement, or for helping patients stay well. — Clayton M Christensen

In the United States, 25 percent of all Medicare spending is for the 5 percent of patients who are in their final year of life, and most of that money goes for care in their last couple of months that is of little apparent benefit. — Atul Gawande

In its basic form, nursing can be seen as a duty, but beyond the incessant operational activities that lay the foundation of our daily work, the profession is all about grace. Helping people is a noble calling. It is a privilege to serve my fellow human beings. Fifteen years has seen many ups and downs at the workplace, but I have enjoyed serving the many patients who come into my care, and have prayed for the souls of those who were on the brink of death. — Katherine Soh

Life had stopped for her a long time ago. She was so out of touch with her feelings that she had no joy in her life and no concept of the fact that she could be wrong. She delivered her care of her insane patients in a killing manner, but she was convinced she was right. — Louise Fletcher

The vast majority of people who speak to me say they have had brilliant care. When they are critical, their concern tends not to be directed at the medical side but the ancillary things that surround it, such as helping patients to eat meals, cleanliness, and making sure that when patients have a problem, they are listened to. — Andrew Lansley

I grew up with a lot of dinner table conversations about health care and ways in which the system was inadequate for the needs of many of the patients they took care of. — Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey

We need money to scale up the services that bring medicine to mothers. The United States government's doing that. There's a global fund that's providing money. mothers2mothers provides for mothers who come in who don't have education, who don't have support. mothers2mothers employs mothers with HIV, mothers who were patients recently in the very same facilities. We take those mothers who were patients who've had their babies, we bring them back, we train them, we pay them, to be health care professionals. — Annie Lennox

Participatory Medicine is a model of cooperative health care that seeks to achieve active involvement by patients, professionals, caregivers, and others across the continuum of care on all issues related to an individual's health. Participatory medicine is an ethical approach to care that also holds promise to improve outcomes, reduce medical errors, increase patient satisfaction and improve the cost of care. — Bertalan Mesko

My dad, who is a heart surgeon, works with many adult patients who did not take good care of their bodies in their formative years. He is able to teach them how to break old eating and exercise habits and reshape their bodies, but not without a great deal of resistance. — Daphne Oz

Many scientists have interfered with science in precisely the way courts always worried tissue donors might do. "It's ironic," she told me. "The Moore court's concern was, if you give a person property rights in their tissues, it would slow down research because people might withhold access for money. But the Moore decision backfired - it just handed that commercial value to researchers." According to Andrews and a dissenting California Supreme Court judge, the ruling didn't prevent commercialization; it just took patients out of the equation and emboldened scientists to commodify tissues in increasing numbers. Andrews and many others have argued that this makes scientists less likely to share samples and results, which slows research; they also worry that it interferes with health-care delivery. — Rebecca Skloot

We repeatedly tell patients we are not in a hurry; there are no trains to catch and we don't care when the baby comes, only how! A doctor who is in a hurry does not belong in the field of obstetrics. As my chief pointed out, 'An obstetrician should have a big rear end and the good sense to sit calmly thereupon and let nature take its course. — Robert A. Bradley

a famous 1925 lecture given by Professor Francis Peabody to the Harvard medical student body: The good physician knows his patients through and through, and his knowledge is bought dearly. Time, sympathy, and understanding must be lavishly dispensed, but the reward is to be found in that personal bond which forms the greatest satisfaction of the practice of medicine. One of the essential qualities of the clinician is interest in humanity, for the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient. — Robert Wachter

The two things are synergistic, the health care crisis and the food crisis. Right now, to a large extent, the food industry's biggest product is patients for the health care industry and we have to break that. — Michael Pollan

This course is designed for physicians, nurses, physician assistants, and allied care providers in the primary care setting who may identify and treat patients with chronic pain syndromes. — Mark Rose

It took 23 years from Abraxane being conceived to us showing now with conclusiveness that it works in pancreatic cancer. We cannot afford as a society to wait another 23 years to make sure that the patients get the right care, at the right time, at the right place. — Patrick Soon-Shiong

Putting aside competitive interests for a new kind of collaboration, Maryland pioneered a real-time encounter notification service to alert primary care doctors when their patients are hospitalized. — Martin O'Malley

If Patents are for Patients, Then Patients will be for Patents. — Kalyan C. Kankanala

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

Now I know what you're saying. You're saying: 'Dave, you have painted a distorted and inaccurate picture of the American health-care system. Not all patients wind up being as wretched as Mary! Many of them wind up being dead'. — Dave Barry

As patients and consumers, we are better informed today about our health care than any previous generation. — Patricia Hewitt

For we are not all equally afflicted with the same disease or all in need of the same severe cure. This is the reason why we see different persons disciplined with different crosses. The heavenly Physician takes care of the well-being of all his patients; he gives some a milder medicine and purifies others by more shocking treatments, but he omits no one; for the whole world, without exception, is ill (Deut 32:15). — John Calvin

Economists specialize in pointing out unpleasant trade-offs - a skill that is on full display in the health care debate. We want patients to receive the best care available. We also want consumers to pay less. And we don't want to bankrupt the government or private insurers. Something must give. — Sendhil Mullainathan

I think doctors care very deeply about their patients, but when they organize into the AMA, their responsibility is to the welfare of doctors, and quite often, these lobbying groups are the only ones that are heard in the state capitols and in the capitol of our country. — Jimmy Carter

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

Getting lab results to child clinicians faster compliments our Action Plan for Health Care by helping more patients get the right care, at the right time. It's quite the achievement when over two million children across Ontario will experience better and more coordinated care thanks to the work being done by SickKids and eHealth Ontario. — Deb Matthews

Where there were once several competing approaches to medicine, there is now only one that matters to most hospitals, insurers, and the vast majority of the public. One that has been shaped to a great degree by the successful development of potent cures that followed the discovery of sulfa drugs. Aspiring caregivers today are chosen as much (or more) for their scientific abilities, their talent for mastering these manifold technological and pharmaceutical advances as for their interpersonal skills. A century ago most physicians were careful, conservative observers who provided comfort to patients and their families. Today they act: They prescribe, they treat, they cure. They routinely perform what were once considered miracles. The result, in the view of some, has been a shift in the profession from caregiver to technician. The powerful new drugs changed how care was given as well as who gave it. — Thomas Hager

I don't think the people today who start hearing voices, stop eating and sleeping, and run amuck are likely to get good treatment. Having more knowledge, better diagnostic capabilities, better medications with fewer side effects, can't make up for the fact that most patients are being treated by doctors, therapists, and hospitals, who are operating under constraints and incentives that reward non-treatment, non-hospitalization, non-therapy, non-follow-up, non-care. Lost to follow-up is the best outcome a health insurer can hope for. — Mark Vonnegut

Reject the phony Patients' Bill of Rights ... We don't have to continue down the path of socialized medical care, especially in America where free markets have provided so much for so many. — Ron Paul

It was a lesson she was still learning. When she had first started nursing, she had taken every death personally, like she was losing her father all over again. Every patient lost under her care was a little piece of death she would carry around with her until the end of her own life. But the alternative seemed so unfeeling. Tina and the other nurses could crack jokes and banter back and forth about contestants on American Idol before the body of a deceased patient was even cold. It was a coping mechanism, she knew, but not necessarily one she thought she would ever adopt. There had to be something in between. Olive had been called a bleeding heart before, but her heart no longer had the same plasticity and tenderness - it was scarred and worn beyond repair — Andrea Lochen

The health care establishment is structured to profit from chemical and surgical intervention. Diet still takes the back seat to drugs and surgery. One criticism that is constantly leveled at the dietary argument is that patients will not make such fundamental changes. One doctor charges that Dr. Esselstyn's patients change their eating habits simply because of Esselstyn's "zealous belief."47 This criticism is not only wrong and insulting to patients; it is also self-fulfilling. If doctors do not believe that patients will change their diets, they will neglect to talk about diet, or will do it in an off-handed, disparaging way. — T. Colin Campbell

The stronger ties between primary care providers and the patients they serve will produce better outcomes and allow for more sustainable healthcare spending. — Tony Tan

You have to learn when to care, son. His father's voice. And when to let go. You'll grow calluses. He never had. Storm him, he never had. It was why he'd never made a good surgeon. He couldn't lose patients. — Brandon Sanderson

The way to succeed is giving people a noble reason to do something despicable. And my patients ... my clients, my characters are doing kind of scamming, deceptive things but they're doing them for noble reasons. Typically to be loved, to be accepted, to trick someone into embracing them and care for them. — Chuck Palahniuk

And I can imagine Farmer saying he doesn't care if no one else is willing to follow their example. He's still going to make these hikes, he'd insist, because if you say that seven hours is too long to walk for two families of patients, you're saying that their lives matter less than some others', and the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that's wrong with the world. — Tracy Kidder

They were both my patients and they were two kids. I took care of both of them....Of both their bodies. And...for a brief moment I wondered if this is how God feels when he looks down at us. How we are all his kids....Our bodies....Our souls....And I felt a great deal of compassion....For both of them.... — Moises Kaufman

We start with people who are motivated to get paid and be on TV, and we end up with people who have been transformed by the experience and go on to embrace sobriety. If they relapse, like most of my patients do, we continue to support and treat them. I'm thrilled that five out the eight [Celebrity Rehab cast members] showed up for after-care, and two more committed to coming back. — Drew Pinsky

This gave me a feeling of what seemed wrong with American medicine, that it consisted more and more of specialists. There were fewer and fewer primary care physicians, the base of the pyramid. My father and my two older brothers were all general practitioners, and I found myself feeling not like a super-specialist in migraine but like the general practitioner these patients should have seen to begin with. — Oliver Sacks

I believe it's imperative to bring the light of support and knowledge to patients and families when death is approaching. — Lisa J. Shultz

We have to be very careful not to blame the patients. A lot of the conversation [around patient engagement] has been, how do we get them to do stuff? To me, that's not engagement. — Victor Montori

I am here on behalf of all the patients that I have ever met, all the ones I haven't met. This is about letting patients play a more active role ... in fixing health care. — Dave DeBronkart

The forces that have worked hard to stoke populist anger against reform are the very ones that benefit from a health system which puts profits ahead of quality care for its patients. — Jerrold Nadler

In Illinois, community, migrant, homeless and public housing health centers operate 268 primary care sites and serve close to 1 million patients every year. — Jan Schakowsky

Nurses have new and expanding roles. They are case managers, helping patients navigate the maze of health care choices and develop plans of care. They are patient educators who focus on preventative care in a multitude of settings outside hospitals. And they are leaders, always identifying ways for their practice to improve. Because nurses have the most direct patient care, they have much influence on serious treatment decisions. It is a very high stakes job. Everyone wants the best nurse for the job, and that equates to the best educated nurse. — Judi Evans

The palliative care nurses welcome him: he's a spot of brightness, they claim he keeps the patients interested in life. "We don't think of the clients here as dying," one of them said to him on his first visit. "After all everyone's dying, just some of us more slowly. — Margaret Atwood

If you think about how healthcare is delivered, it's on an ad hoc basis. Someone comes into a hospital, someone comes into a pharmacy, someone comes into a doctor. But beyond those touchpoints, the patients are on their own. There's no real continuity of care. — Chris Viehbacher

Value in medicine depends on information - as I said in 'Let Patients Help,' 'People perform better when they're informed better.' It follows that to make patients and families more effective in care, they need to know more. — Dave DeBronkart

When the Veterans Affairs Department implemented a program to provide home-based health care to veterans with multiple chronic conditions - many of the system's most expensive patients to treat - they received astounding results. — Ron Wyden

The important question isn't how to keep bad physicians from harming patient; it's how to keep good physicians from harming patients. Medical malpractice suits are a remarkably ineffective remedy.
(In reference to a Harvard Medical Practice Study) ... fewer than 2 percent of the patients who had received substandard care ever filed suit. Conversely, only a small minority among patients who did sue had in fact been victims of negligent care. And a patient's likelihood of winning a suit depended primarily on how poor his or her outcome was, regardless of whether that outcome was caused by disease or unavoidable risks of care. The deeper problem with medical malpractice is that by demonizing errors they prevent doctors from acknowledging & discussing them publicly. The tort system makes adversaries of patient & physician, and pushes each other to offer a heavily slanted version of events.
— Atul Gawande

Real faith, however, is required to endure this necessary but painful developmental process. As things unfold, sometimes in full view, let us be merciful with each other. We certainly do not criticize hospital patients amid intensive care for looking pale and preoccupied. Why then those recovering from surgery on their souls? No need for us to stare; those stitches will finally come out. And in this hospital, too, it is important for everyone to remember that the hospital chart is not the patient. Extending our mercy to someone need not wait upon our full understanding of their challenges! Empathy may not be appreciated or reciprocated, but empathy is never wasted. — Neal A. Maxwell

Supported by digital data, new data-driven tools, and payment policies that reward improving the quality and value of care, doctors, hospitals, patients, and entrepreneurs across the nation are demonstrating that smarter, better, more accessible, and more proactive care is the best way to improve quality and control health care costs. — Todd Park

Still, for the moment he was keeping quiet about his interest in cancer. "You have to realize, cancer was a devastating disease," said Druker. "Everybody died." The disease was a grim, dark domain where only the most morbid physician dared tread, and Druker was unwilling to admit, even to himself, that he was fascinated by it. "Everybody was afraid of it, and people in oncology [were] weird because this disease was so hopeless," he recalled. "Why would you go take care of patients with no hope? You were crazy if you were going to do that. — Jessica Wapner

You don't have to spend much time with the elderly or those with terminal illness to see how often medicine fails the people it is supposed to help. The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver's chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions - nursing homes and intensive care units - where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life. Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need. — Atul Gawande

I might have been just as happy to have been a practicing primary-care doctor. But as a medical student, I had interacted with patients suffering from neurodegeneration or acute clinical schizophrenia. It left an indelible mark on my memory. — James Rothman

61% of physicians felt their EHR improved the quality of care they delivered to patients, but only 1 in 3 said it had improved their job satisfaction, and 1 in 5 said they would go back to paper if they could.

Tellingly, the more advanced the EHR; for example, systems that offered reminders, alerts, and messaging capability, the greater the unhappiness. — Robert Wachter

Consider the case of La Crosse, Wisconsin. Its elderly residents have unusually low end-of-life hospital costs. During their last six months, according to Medicare data, they spend half as many days in the hospital as the national average, and there's no sign that doctors or patients are halting care prematurely. Despite average rates of obesity and smoking, their life expectancy outpaces the national mean by a year. — Atul Gawande

The hospital will never be healthy for patients if it's not a healthy environment for nurses, where their voices are heard and where they can care for their patients and use the full extent of their knowledge, abilities, and skills. After all, hospitals today have become one big intensive care unit: all patients need intensive caring. — Tilda Shalof

As a doctor who took care of patients for 25 years, I saw the problems with America's health care system every day. — John Barrasso

The doctors snap at the nurses, who snap at the patient care assistants, who snap at the cleaners, who snap at the patients who are too sick to respond. Those at the bottom of the heap have no choice but to be good. No one can doubt the virtue of the helpless. — Jinat Rehana Begum

Hospitals have missed the point that the best way to improve the patient experience is to build better engagement with their employees, who will then provide better service and health care to patients. — Paul Spiegelman

Caring for the soul requires that we be fully present in situations we cannot control and patient as a genuine meaning and a direction unfold. It means seeing familiar things in new ways, listening rather than speaking, learning from patients rather than teaching them, and cultivating the capacity to be amazed. It means recognizing the power of our own humanity to make a difference in the lives of others and valuing it as highly as our expertise. Finally, it means discovering that health care is a front-row seat on mystery and sitting in that seat with open eyes. — Christina M. Puchalski

Filming this drama made me realise how noble the nursing profession really is
from the selfless dedication to the care and love for patients. Let me take this opportunity to pay tribute to all the great nurses out there! — Rebecca Lim

So Medicare decided to pay hospitals like ours for internship and
residency training programs, get it? It's a win-win, as they say - the hospital
gets patients cared for by interns and residents around the clock,people like us who live on site, and whose stipend is a bloody fraction of what the hospital would pay full-time physicians. And Medicare delivers health care to the poor. — Abraham Verghese

Safe care saves lives and saves money. Adverse events like high levels of infection, blood clots or falls in hospital, emergency readmissions and pressure sores cost the NHS billions of pounds every year. There is a serious human cost, too, with patients ending up injured, or even dead. Most are avoidable with the right care. — Andrew Lansley

Terminally ill cancer patients who were put on a mechanical ventilator, given electrical defibrillation or chest compressions, or admitted, near death, to intensive care had a substantially worse quality of life in their last week than those who received no such interventions. And, six months after their death, their caregivers were three times as likely to suffer major depression. — Atul Gawande

Patient autonomy is paramount to the oath that we take when we enter the profession of medicine. That is why I am appalled when the federal government gets between my patients and their right to the full range of medical information and complete access to health care. — Ami Bera

Once I started working with older people, I realized how much I enjoyed the intellectual challenge of taking care of patients who have multiple, complex medical problems. — Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

1. Define and articulate the role and functions of social work in end-of-life care in a consistent manner across all settings. 2. Address negative public and professional perceptions of social work internally and externally. 3. Identify and articulate specific and unique contributions of the social work profession in end-of-life care. 4. Facilitate and promote end-of-life social work research that demonstrates the utility and efficiency of social work in hospice. 5. Facilitate collaborative advocacy at the macro level to ensure access to quality interdisciplinary end-of-life care for all people. 6. Actively challenge shortsighted cost-saving initiatives that minimize the psychosocial and spiritual components of care for patients and families. 7. Develop standards for effective models of practice in end-of-life care. — Joan N. Berzoff

People spending more of their own money on routine health care would make the system more competitive and transparent and restore the confidence between the patients and the doctors without government rationing. — Ben Carson

I think what's happening with the veterans is a gift from God to show us what happens when you take layers and layers of bureaucracy and place them between the patients and the health care provider. And if we can't get it right, with the relatively small number of veterans, how in the world are you going to do it with the entire population? — Benjamin Carson

Traveling has become such a miserable experience that no Palestinian does it, except those who absolutely have to: students attending foreign universities, patients needing care unavailable in Gaza, businesspeople attempting to pretend that their world will eventually be normal. — Izzeldin Abuelaish

For patients who are rarely hospitalized, who have little understanding of how the human body works, who lack money, or simply don't read or speak English very well, our high expectations of them as outpatients may make any outcome but failure unlikely. All of us who work in health care put our shoulder to that huge rock every day trying to get the system to work. But sometimes shift after shift it feels like the same damn rock. I'm — Theresa Brown

You're right. Many nurses nowadays don't like doing the things that nurses used to have to do. Changing sheets and collecting bedpans - that sort of thing. Nursing has moved on, Bertie.'
Bertie was puzzled. 'But if they don't do that,' he said, 'then who does? Do people have to tuck themselves into bed when they're in hospital?'
Irene was amused by this and raised her eyes again. 'Dear Bertie, no, not at all. They have other people now to do that sort of thing. There are other wome ... people who do that.' 'So they aren't nurses, Mummy?' asked Bertie. Irene waved a hand vaguely. 'No. They call them care assistants, or something like that. It's very important work.' 'So what do the nurses do then, Mummy? If they have somebody else to take the bedpans to the patients, what's left for the nurses to do? Do they do the things that doctors do? Can nurses take your tonsils out?' 'I think they'd like to,' said Irene. — Alexander McCall Smith

Residents of my district continue to stress to me that they want health care decisions to be made by patients and doctors, not by the government and insurance companies. — Tim Walberg

The Patients' Bill of Rights is necessary to guarantee that health care will be available for those who are paying for insurance. It's a part of the overall health care picture. — Debbie Stabenow

Perhaps the greatest danger in the way that alternative therapists behave is simply the promotion of their own treatments when patients should be in the care of a conventional doctor. There are numerous reports of patients with serious conditions (e.g. diabetes, cancer, AIDS) suffering harm after following irresponsible advice form alternative practitioners instead of following the advice of a doctor. — Simon Singh

Look at other countries that have tried to have federally controlled health care. They have poor-quality health care. Our health-care system is the envy of the world because we believe in making sure that the decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by officials in the nation's capital. — George W. Bush

The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them. — George Bernard Shaw

"Religion" can no more be equated with what goes on in churches than "education" can be reduced to what happens in schools or "health care" restricted to what doctors do to patients in clinics. The vast majority of healing and learning goes on among parents and children and families and friends, far from the portals of any school or hospital. The same is true for religion. It is going on around us all the time. Religion is larger and more pervasive than churches. — Harvey Cox

We have really good data that show when you take patients and you really inform them about their choices, patients make more frugal choices. They pick more efficient choices than the health care system does. — Donald Berwick

If I'm serious about patients and their GPs being able to have more control of their health care, I can't have a top-down system that imposes restrictions on the services they need. — Andrew Lansley

I was learning. In medicine, we have long faced a conflict between the imperative to give patients the best possible care and the need to provide novices with experience. Residencies attempt to mitigate potential harm through supervision and graduated responsibility. And there is reason to think patients actually — Atul Gawande

What we're really trying to do is level out the health care system. It has gotten so one-sided as more and more people have been put into managed care; in fact, about 70 percent of the patients in the country. — Charlie Norwood

Our principal claim here is that patients and doctors should be free to make their own agreements about that right. If patients want to waive the right to sue, they should be allowed to do exactly that. This increase in freedom is likely to help doctors and patients alike, and to make a valuable, even if modest, contribution to the health care problem. — Richard H. Thaler

I have to tell you as a doctor, 25 years of practice, not as a politician using talking points, as somebody who has taken care of Medicare patients, we can make it a lot better. — John Barrasso

Money spent on vegetative patients is money not spent on preventive care, such as flu shots and mammograms. Each night in an ICU bed for such patients is a night that another patient with a genuine prognosis for recovery is denied such high-end care. Every dollar exhausted on patients who will never wake up again is a dollar not devoted to finding a cure for cancer. — Jacob M. Appel

A central notion in the Affordable Care Act was we had an inefficient system with a lot of waste that didn't also deliver the kind of quality that was needed that often put health care providers in a box where they wanted to do better for their patients, but financial incentives were skewed the other way, we don't need to reinvent the wheel
you're already figuring out what works to reduce infections in hospitals or help patients with complicated needs. — Barack Obama

By offering individuals ownership and control of their health care coverage, we return control to the patients; and that is exactly where it should be. — Chris Chocola

Decades-old studies have shown that primary care physicians sued less often are those more likely to spend time educating patients about their care, more likely to use humor and laugh with their patients and more likely to try to get their patients to talk and express their opinions. It seems that more likable physicians are less likely to have claims filed against them. — Anonymous

Two-thirds of the terminal cancer patients in the Coping with Cancer study reported having had no discussion with their doctors about their goals for end-of-life care, despite being, on average, just four months from death. But the third who did have discussions were far less likely to undergo cardiopulmonary resuscitation or be put on a ventilator or end up in an intensive care unit. Most of them enrolled in hospice. They suffered less, were physically more capable, and were better able, for a longer period, to interact with others. In addition, six months after these patients died, their family members were markedly less likely to experience persistent major depression. In other words, people who had substantive discussions with their doctor about their end-of-life preferences were far more likely to die at peace and in control of their situation and to spare their family anguish. — Atul Gawande

The 2 million people who work in the NHS and social care are also themselves patients and users. I know they all want to treat patients and users the way they and their families would want to be treated and that is the purpose of our reforms. — Patricia Hewitt

hospital. You know they gave me male nurses on purpose." "Of course they did. They didn't want any of their female nurses shirking their duties to the other patients to take care of you." Levi Spencer was one of the most, if not the most, eligible bachelors in Las Vegas. He was rich, for one thing, and couldn't help being charming any more than he could help his gorgeous - according to Joe's own wife - blue eyes, dark hair or I'm-trouble-and-you'll-love-every-minute-of-it grin. "You're mostly bored," Joe said. "None of my friends came to visit me in the hospital." Joe sighed. He wasn't sure that Levi actually — Erin Nicholas

We are spending most of our time in American health care fixing the mistakes that either we in the profession are causing or our patients are, without recognizing it, causing to themselves. — Mehmet Oz

Other ex-lawyers become advocates in entirely different fields. Jen Atkins went from law to nursing, spending several years at home in between careers. As a cardiology nurse at Boston Children's Hospital, she now advocates for the youngest patients at a critical time. One of her long-term goals is to become an advocate for improving health care on a national level. Counseling — Liz Brown

I have found that when calculating what no one has calculated before, like my observing sessions on the mountain, my mental acuity peaks. Ironically, these are the times that I would flunk the reality check normally reserved for mental patients and dazed boxers: What is your name? What day is it? Who is the president of the United States? ... I do not know, and I do not care. I am at peace with my equations as I connect to the cosmic engines that drive our universe. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I do mean this - I had the good fortune of being around a number of Alzheimer's patients in the last three years of my mother's life. She was in a care facility that was devoted to just people with memory-loss issues. I found those people engaging and generous in ways that I had not imagined. — James Rebhorn

Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders provides clinicians with essential guidelines to treat patients in the era of managed care. Seven psychiatric disorders are described and conceptualized in cognitive-behavioral terms. The authors then provided an unusually clear, reader-friendly description of how to assess and treat each disorder with illustrative case examples, and patient forms and handouts. It should prove very useful for clinicians or clinicians-in-training who want to learn how to conduct short-term treatment through an empirically validated approach. — Judith S. Beck

This was the tenth month of my "fellowship" in oncology - a two-year immersive medical program to train cancer specialists - and I felt as if I had gravitated to my lowest point. In those ten indescribably poignant and difficult months, dozens of patients in my care had died. I felt as if I was slowly becoming inured to the deaths and the desolation - vaccinated against the constant emotional brunt. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Many of us are alarmed at the skyrocketing cost of medical care, including patients, who are the consumers. However, medical malpractice is not the reason for these increasing costs. — Joe Baca