Medical Quotes

“There aren't any syringes." Red Sox came over and held a sterile pack out. When she tried to take it from him, he kept a grip on the thing. "I know you'll use this wisely."
"Wisely?" She snapped the syringe out of his hand. "No, I'm going to poke him in the eye with it. Because that's what they trained me to do in medical school.”
― J.R. Ward, Lover Unbound

“I reached and grabbed ahold of the garden rake that was leaned up against the tree, when suddenly I felt my heart begin to race and I began to feel dizzy as my visual field became black. That is the last thing I recall before awakening to find myself lying on the ground in the front yard, with the handle of the rake resting on my chest.”
― DEAN MAFAKO, M.D., Burned Out

“I was able to shake off the near-death experience, and whether it was true or not, I was able to use it as some sort of moral validation as to the importance of my existence, or at least the importance of me completing this job, because clearly God, the universe or whoever understood that there was no other human being alive on this earth stupid enough to take this job.”
― DEAN MAFAKO, M.D., Burned Out

“The disturbing part is that no one teaches us how to deal with death at any point during our medical training, or even during our lifetime for that matter, particularly in a field such as mine where death was an inevitable certainty for some patients.”
― DEAN MAFAKO, M.D., Burned Out

“In my opinion, our health care system has failed when a doctor fails to treat an illness that is treatable.”
― Kevin Alan Lee, The Split Mind: Schizophrenia from an Insider's Point of View

“When I arrived, I did the job of six people and worked over one hundred hours per week for more than a year until I collapsed in my yard and nearly died!”
― DEAN MAFAKO, M.D., Burned Out

“Pilots used to fly planes manually, but now they operate a dashboard with the help of computers. This has made flying safer and improved the industry.
Healthcare can benefit from the same type of approach, with physicians practicing medicine with the help of data, dashboards, and AI. This will improve
the quality of care they provide and make their jobs easier and more efficient”
― Ronald M. Razmi, AI Doctor: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare - A Guide for Users, Buyers, Builders, and Investors

“THE MAXIMS OF MEDICINE

Before you examine the body of a patient,
Be patient to learn his story.
For once you learn his story,
You will also come to know
His body.
Before you diagnose any sickness,
Make sure there is no sickness in the mind or heart.
For the emotions in a man’s moon or sun,
Can point to the sickness in
Any one of his other parts.
Before you treat a man with a condition,
Know that not all cures can heal all people.
For the chemistry that works on one patient,
May not work for the next,
Because even medicine has its own
Conditions.
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.


THE MAXIMS OF MEDICINE by Suzy Kassem”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“All worries are less with wine.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“It's the same with the wound in our hearts. We need to give them our attention so that they can heal. Otherwise the wounds continue to cause us pain. Sometimes for a very long time. We're all going to get hurt. But here's the trick - they also serve an amazing purpose.
When our hearts are wounded that's when they open.
We grow through pain.
We grow through difficult situations.
That's why you have to embrace each and every difficult thing in your life.”
― James R. Doty, Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart

“The gut is the seat of all feeling. Polluting the gut not only cripples your immune system, but also destroys your sense of empathy, the ability to identify with other humans. Bad bacteria in the gut creates neurological issues. Autism can be cured by detoxifying the bellies of young children. People who think that feelings come from the heart are wrong. The gut is where you feel the loss of a loved one first. It's where you feel pain and a heavy bulk of your emotions. It's the central base of your entire immune system. If your gut is loaded with negative bacteria, it affects your mind. Your heart is the seat of your conscience. If your mind is corrupted, it affects your conscience. The heart is the Sun. The gut is the Moon. The pineal gland is Neptune, and your brain and nervous system (5 senses) are Mercury. What affects the moon or sun affects the entire universe within. So, if you poison the gut, it affects your entire nervous system, your sense of reasoning, and your senses.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Medical school had been a time for imaginary diseases and Martin had contracted almost all of them.”
― Robin Cook, Brain

“poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you”
― Walt Whitman, Drum Taps

“$13 to $20 billion a year could be saved in health care costs by demedicalizing childbirth, developing midwifery, and encouraging breastfeeding.”
― Frank Oski

“Sure some medical experts say coffee could be a health hazard, but they obviously never built a web site before!”
― Geoff Blake, Ten Ton Dreamweaver

“You cannot separate passion from pathology any more than you can separate a person's spirit from his body.”
― Richard Selzer, Letters To A Young Doctor

“You'll be fine, just some minor burns and hypothermia, which was kind of hard to explain.”
― Kiersten White, Paranormalcy

“Love is a chemical reaction,
But it cannot be fully understood or defined by science.
And though a body cannot exist without a soul,
It too cannot be fully understood or defined by science.
Love is the most powerful form of energy,
But science cannot decipher its elements.
Yet the best cure for a sick soul is love,
But even the most advanced physician
Cannot prescribe it as medicine.


INCOMPLETE SCIENCE by Suzy Kassem”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“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, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

“It's really a very simple arrangement, little mother. He fully understands that either they get healthy, or he gets sick. That sort of encourages him to do his best.”
― David Eddings, The Ruby Knight

“It is perfectly acceptable to have a physical problem in our culture, but people tend to shy away from anything that has to do with the emotions.”
― John E. Sarno, Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection

“Life is a sewer and we are all but swimmers within it. Smart people do the backstroke. (In other words you gotta have a giggle.)”
― Stephen B. Pearl, Tinker's Plague

“There wasn't an anhydrous lacrimal gland in the room...”
― Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

“With his revelation,...I shattered into a million shards. I felt each piece as it splintered and separated from the whole like a glass I had broken the day before. Debris flew everywhere. It left me without any option but to pick each broken piece up, analyze it, and find out where it belonged. I had to find out where I belonged.
Allison La Crosse - Warriors of the Cross”
― T.R. Graves, Warriors of the Cross

“Please don't humiliate me by killing yourself before we can save your life.”
― Kristin Hannah, Home Again

“We were putting into these gomers our fear of death, but who knew if they feared death? Perhaps they welcomed death like a dear long-lost cousin, grown old but still known, coming to visit, relieving the loneliness, the failing of the senses, the fury of the half-blind looking into the mirror and not recognizing who is looking back, a dear friend, a dear reliever, a healer who would be with them for an eternity, the same eternity as the long ago, before birth.”
― Samuel Shem, The House of God

“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, A Medical Affair

“You never know what’s lurking in the bloodstream, or skulking under the foreskin, or squatting in the liver, or flitting hither and thither from branch to branch in the bronchial forest.”
― Ian Martin, Henry Fuckit's Nursing Notes

“Ever met a sympathetic doctor? No ways. They’re always impatient, glancing at the watch, calculating the price of your sickness against the price of another pair of shoes for the bitch wife with the reluctant cunt.”
― Ian Martin, Henry Fuckit's Nursing Notes

“Balance life's stressors with life's pleasures.”
― Norene Moskalski, Nocturne, Opus 1: Sea Foam