What we have now is doctors who are actually better technically at what they're doing in their specialty than 30 or 40 years ago, but we lost the relationship, when the doctor would look people in the eye and say, 'I care about you. We can do this together.'
Interpretation
Modern doctors possess better technical skills but often lack the personal touch in patient relationships.
This quote emphasizes the shift in the medical profession over the past few decades. While doctors today may have advanced technical knowledge and skills that surpass those of their predecessors, the essence of patient care has changed, leading to a loss of the genuine human connection that fosters trust and collaboration. The quote highlights the importance of empathy and communication in medicine, suggesting that true healing involves a partnership between doctor and patient.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of patient-centered healthcare, you could reference this quote.
As a surgeon you have to have a controlled arrogance. If it's uncontrolled, you kill people, but you have to be pretty arrogant to saw through a person's chest, take out their heart and believe you can fix it. Then, when you succeed and the patient survives, you pray, because it's only by the grace of God that you get there.
As we get better at understanding how little we know about the body, we begin to realize that the next big frontier in medicine, is energy medicine. It's not the mechanistic part of the joints moving. It's not the chemistry of our body. It's understanding for the first time how energy influences how we feel.
I've found that if I tell somebody 'Eat this and don't do that,' it's not only not helpful, it's counterproductive because even more than being healthy, we want to feel free and in control, and as soon as somebody tells us to do something, there's a tendency to do just the opposite.
Just using a checklist requires [doctors] to embrace different values from ones we've had, like humility, discipline, teamwork.
The choices you make each day in your diet and lifestyle have a direct influence on how your genetic predisposition is expressed - for better and for worse. You're only as old as your genes, but how your genes are expressed may be modified by exercise, diet and lifestyle choices much more than had previously been believed - and more quickly.
We have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their healthcare.
There is a glaring reason that the necessary total ban on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics hasn't happened: The factory farm industry, allied with the pharmaceutical industry, has more power than public-health professionals.
There is no health without mental health; mental health is too important to be left to the professionals alone, and mental health is everyone's business.
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