Joseph Lister Quotes

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

I'm opposed to anybody getting between me and the patient.

I've always approached my job first as a physician. I'm here to help and take care of patients. I'm an administrator second.

I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.

The physician, to the extent he is a physician, considers only the good of the patient in what he prescribes, and his own not at all

Doctors have an ethical duty to follow the practices and standards of care.

I'm trying to knock the medical profession into accepting its responsibilities, and those responsibilities include assisting their patients with death.

The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.

I always knew I wanted to be a doctor, but I also knew that being a doctor meant more than treating just the patient in front of you.

I'm a physician first and foremost. I will always be a physician.

As a doctor, I've learned the importance and value of listening.

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.

I love the opportunity to help my patients, to work with them to find the best course of action to get them healthy and to give them the information they need to stay healthy.

No doctor should ever have to call an insurance man to ask permission to treat a patient who is standing right there.

No health care provider may be penalized for discussing medically necessary or appropriate care with or on behalf of his or her patient.

A Patients' Bill of Rights is at the center of our national existence.

The hospital industry to this day works its tail off to do the right thing.

We are trained to be medical doctors first and if you have to put neurosurgery aside to deal with the most vulnerable and susceptible patients, then that's what we'll do.

When I opened my solo practice, I made it a priority to put my patients' experience first and foremost. This involves making them feel comfortable, both literally and figuratively.

I was a nurse.

Social reform is the desperate decision to remove corns from a person suffering from cancer.

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.

It is a moral achievement on the part of the doctor who ought not to let himself be repelled by sickness and corruption.

We are guests in our patients' lives.

Otis Brawley is one of America's truly outstanding physician scientists. In How We Do Harm, he challenges all of us-- physicians, patients, and communities-- to recommit ourselves to the pledge to 'do no harm.'