I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient whose care I am taking over is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient; it's only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.
Interpretation
Understanding patients requires personal interaction rather than just data analysis.
Abraham Verghese highlights the importance of direct human contact in healthcare, emphasizing that truly understanding a patient's condition goes beyond what can be gleaned from electronic records. By visiting the bedside, a caregiver can grasp the nuances of each patient's experience and prioritize their needs more effectively.
In practice
A doctor might cite this quote during a seminar on patient-centered care.
The flip side of suicide is that it leaves a lingering question in the minds of the people who survived. It's like a cancer that's metastasized. The suicide is the cancer and the metastasis is all these people saying, Why? Why? Why?
We're losing a ritual. We're losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.
It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.
My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.
You are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can can play the 'Gloria'? No, not Bach's 'Gloria.' Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.
Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school - not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.
How do you build up your bank account? By putting something in it everyday.Your health account is no different. What I do today, I am wearing tomorrow. If I put inferior foods in my body today, I'm going to be inferior tomorrow, it's that simple.
Those weeks before diagnosis can be among the most torturous times. There is a reason you're called a patient once the plastic bracelet goes on.
And let's be clear: It's not enough just to limit ads for foods that aren't healthy. It's also going to be critical to increase marketing for foods that are healthy.
The man who uses intelligence with respect to his diet, his sleeping habits and who exercises properly, is beyond any question of doubt taking the very best preventive medicines provided so freely and abundantly by nature
If you want to prevent abortions, you make sure everyone has health care, a high school education and birth control. Not the exact opposite.
Just as food causes chronic disease, it can be the most powerful cure
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