Jodi Picoult Quotes

The doctor I would want for myself or for anyone else I cared about would be one who understands that disease is more than just a clinical entity; it is an experience and a metaphor, with a message that must be listened to.

Good physicians are rarely dispassionate. They agonize and self-doubt over patients.

Does anyone really go into nursing intending to be apathetic, cold and removed from suffering? I find that very difficult to believe.

Today, the practice of medicine in an urban, technological society rarely provides either the time or the environment to encourage a doctor-patient relationship that promotes healing.

I wanted to show people that doctors are humans, too. It's important for us to be around other people - that way, we can understand our patients better rather than just walking into a room, barking orders, and walking out.

If you actually are a doctor and admitted it, you'd say, 'I don't cure a huge percentage, I don't have a 50 percent cure rate ... but I can have a 100 percent compassion rate'.

Care more for the individual patient than for the special features of the disease. . . . Put yourself in his place . . . The kindly word, the cheerful greeting, the sympathetic look - these the patient understands.

You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere.

We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds.

Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.

There is only one cardinal rule: One must always listen to the patient.

The best doctors found a middle position where they were neither overwhelmed by their feelings nor estranged from them. That was the most difficult position of all, and the precise balance - neither too detached nor too caring - was something few learned.

God bless the physician who warms the speculum or holds your hand and looks into your eyes. Perhaps one subtext of the health caredebate is a yen to be treated like a whole person, not just an eye, an ear, a nose or a throat. A yen to be human again, on the part of patient and doctor alike.

A doctor’s door should never be closed, a priest's door should always be open.

Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion. You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom. You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.

Doctor." Gideon set one ankle on the opposite knee and settled back, creating a picture of unyielding decisiveness. "The only way I'm keeping my hands off her is if I'm dead. Find another way to fix us." Chapter 3 pg 50

There is among doctors, in acute hospitals at least, a presumption of stupidity in their patients.

Unfortunately in my case, because of what I do for living, here in Ireland is very hard for me to find a doctor who can just deal with me as a person, that can get beyond Sinead O'Connor. I had to go to England to find a psychiatrist for my case.

Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change... Savings will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, “as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others.

The depersonalizati on of diagnosis and therapy has changed malpractice from an ethical into a technical problem.

I came upon a doctor who appeared in quite poor health. I said, 'There's nothing that I can do for you that you can't do for yourself.' He said, 'Oh yes you can. Just hold my hand. I think that that would help.' So I sat with him a while then I asked him how he felt. He said, 'I think I'm cured.'

Nursing is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.

Always thank your nurse. Sometimes they're the only one between you and a hearse.

I feel passionate about nurses. I would do anything for nurses. Anything.

Doctors have been exposed-you always will be exposed-to the attacks of those persons who consider their own undisciplined emotions more important than the world's most bitter agonies-the people who would limit and cripple and hamper research because they fear research may be accompanied by a little pain and suffering.