Patient Doctor Relationship Quotes

“Before operating on a patient's brain, I realized, I must first understand his mind: his identity, his values, what makes his life worth living, & what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end. The cost of my dedication to succeed was high, & the ineluctable failures brought me nearly unbearable guilt. Those burdens are what make medicine holy & wholly impossible.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“He sought a shore of familiarity in this ocean of unknown, and I was the first he had found.”
― Snigdha Nandipati, A Case of Culture: How Cultural Brokers Bridge Divides in Healthcare

“Now the hurt, angry and scared little boy was easy to spot behind the mawkish facade. Carol and I made calls and got Raleigh admitted to a halfway house where he could stay temporarily. I called Fred Goodson and had him come see Raleigh and bring him into their newly formed support group. Though we had given Raleigh information about TAP and the support group, it had probably been too much to expect him to follow up on his own. In putting Raleigh under Fred’s care, I had as secure a feeling as if I had put him in professional therapy. Joyce, my secretary at the VA, explored a job-training possibility for Raleigh.

What had happened to Raleigh was a forceful reminder to me that there was a lot I could do, a lot I had to do, for our patients even if we had no therapy for HIV. I could no longer sit and be the consultant and pontificate over the progression (or lack thereof) of the disease; I was providing primary care, total care for this group of patients, whether I liked it or not.”
― Abraham Verghese, My Own Country: A Doctor's Story

“For a patient to be fully treated by a doctor, the patient must be willing to put all psychological guards down and be vulnerable. And this can only happen if the patient can trust the doctor, and this trust can only be induced through the release of oxytocin, which can only be triggered in the patient's brain by the will of a doctor with a genuine act of kindness on the doctor's part.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Time to Save Medicine

“The moment he spoke in Telugu with them, something in the room changed. There was a new sense of comfort in the air, a sense of ease and safety. It was the feeling of assurance that came with being surrounded by their own people.”
― Snigdha Nandipati, A Case of Culture: How Cultural Brokers Bridge Divides in Healthcare

“We don't have anything to offer, but we began to realize that we had to offer the very things that have made the physician-patient relationship so hallowed for so many reasons, and that is ourselves, our interest, our presence. It may sound strange to say this, but I think a healing can take place even when the disease is incurable and they go on to die. That's a healing that takes place in both the patient and the physician.”
― Abraham Verghese

“Patientcare is our national anthem.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“You can make an appointment with a bad doctor only on a stretcher.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov