Patients know in a heartbeat if they're getting a clumsy exam. Abraham Verghese More Quotes by Abraham Verghese More Quotes From Abraham Verghese Literature is a beautiful way of keeping the imagination alive, of visiting worlds you would never have time to in your day-to-day life. It keeps you abreast of a wider spectrum of human activities. Abraham Verghese alive imagination beautiful The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician. Abraham Verghese physicians reform care 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. Abraham Verghese scripture people thinking I've never bought this idea of taking a therapeutic distance. If I see a student or house staff cry, I take great faith in that. That's a great person; they're going to be a great doctor. Abraham Verghese doctor great great-person faith There's something universal about illness... Whether you like it, at some level all patients are saying, 'Daddy, Mommy, help me, tell me it's going to be alright.' Abraham Verghese help saying me you What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it - the process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialized language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve; empathy can be replaced by cynicism. Abraham Verghese lose medical empathy learning Lets take away the incentives to do 'to' patients and instead create incentives to do 'for' patients, to be 'with' patients. We don't need to do comparative effectiveness trials to see if that works; we can just ask patients. Abraham Verghese need create see trials My deceased patients have taught me over the years to believe in the glass half full, to make good use of the time we have, to be generous - that was their lesson for the Uber-mind, and it was free. 'Do that,' they said, 'and then perhaps death shall have no dominion.' Abraham Verghese good me time death When you have a natural genetic tan developed over centuries and many generations, the idea of soaking up rays by the pool has never made sense. Abraham Verghese tan never you pool My advice for writers is to get a good day job. It takes the pressure off writing if you have a job that pays the bills. Abraham Verghese day good you good-day The incredible cinematography makes 'A Walk to Beautiful' almost like a poem; there is a tenderness on display that seems to emanate from the camera. There is also great sensitivity to the women whose stories are being told - never did I have a sense of the subjects being exploited. Abraham Verghese walk great women beautiful Medicine may be the lens through which I see the world, but since I think of medicine as 'life +', a place where life is exaggerated and seen at its most vital and poignant, I'll be writing about life more than I will be writing about medicine. Abraham Verghese place think life world You can't show up at the bedside and then turn on your skills. You have to keep your game sharp all the time. Abraham Verghese your game you time As a young physician in the mid-'80s, caring for people who had contracted H.I.V., I lost two of my patients to suicide at a time when the virus was doing very little harm to them. I have always thought of them as having been killed by a metaphor, by the burden of secrecy and shame associated with the disease. Abraham Verghese caring suicide time people My desire to be a physician had a lot to do with that sense of medicine as a ministry of healing, not just a science. And not even just a science and an art, but also a calling, also a ministry. Abraham Verghese medicine healing science art I joke, but only half joke, that if you show up in an American hospital missing a finger, no one will believe you until they get a CAT scan, MRI and orthopedic consult. Abraham Verghese hospital will you believe We're now able to show that the words of comfort trigger biological reactions which are the very things that you want, and you can use drugs to get there, or you can use words of comfort to get there, which would make your drugs so much more effective. Abraham Verghese words your you want
