“The process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialised language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve;.”

I always wondered if the good people who send us bibles really think that hookworm and hunger are healed by scripture? Our patients are illiterate.

A beautiful literary collection that tells of today’s country doctor, somewhat removed from our romantic black-bag image of days gone by, but still fulfilling an essential need in caring for spread-out populations.

There are moments as a teacher when I’m conscious that I’m trotting out the same exact phrase my professor used with me years ago.

To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.

When I wake to the gift of yet another sunrise my first thought is to rouse him and say, I owe you the sight of morning.

…guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.

Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school – not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.

By visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not cure.

She died chasing greatness and never saw it each time it was in her hand, so she kept seeking it elsewhere, but never understood the work required to get it or to keep it.

Sandip Roy has broken new ground in this tale of the modern Indian family. A lovely read

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.

There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed-

Make something beautiful of your life.

When we cannot cure or save a life, our patients can at least feel cared for. It should be a basic human right.

I’ve always wanted to write a book like that, with the sense that you are contributing to the discourse in middle America,

I joke, but I only half joke, that if you come to one of our hospitals missing a limb, no one will believe you till they get a CAT scan, MRI, or orthopedic consult.

They back away from challenges. Ironically, they back themselves into the biggest problem of all … being broke, or close to it.

Ironically, the thing that will likely make the least improvement in the ease of use of software-based products is new technology.

The “patron saint” of Japanese quality control, ironically, is an American named W. Edwards Deming, who was virtually unknown in his own country until his ideas of quality control began to make such a big impact on Japanese companies.

Ironically, the section on women’s rights was added by a senator from Virginia who opposed the whole thing and was said to be sure that if he stuck something about womens’ rights into it, it would never pass.