Marcus Luttrell Quotes

The physicians of one class feel the patients and go away, merely prescribing medicine. As they leave the room they simply ask the patient to take the medicine. They are the poorest class of physicians.

The vast majority of people who speak to me say they have had brilliant care. When they are critical, their concern tends not to be directed at the medical side but the ancillary things that surround it, such as helping patients to eat meals, cleanliness, and making sure that when patients have a problem, they are listened to.

Even top caliber hospitals cannot escape medical mistakes that sometimes result in irreparable damage to patients.

With 'Cardiac Arrest,' I wanted to show that there were times when doctors really didn't care.

There is no shortage of embarrassing facts about healthcare, and people die every day in the U.S. due to preventable errors - would you fly planes if you knew several of them would drop out of the sky every day?

The first neurologist I saw just thought I was partying too much, and he stuck by that claim even after my family insisted that he was wrong.

I think that the general public understands that its own doctors are human, fallible, and flawed.

Walk away from medical professionals who dismiss your concerns, and don't quit searching until you find someone who will truly partner with you to find the answers you deserve.

Patients who have suffered appalling medical negligence, abused children ignored by social services, mistreated residents of care homes - they have all been given a voice by the Human Rights Act.

Today, only two groups in the United States have total immunity from lawsuits: foreign diplomats and HMOs. We believe it's time to end diplomatic immunity for HMOs. Holding them accountable is the only way to guarantee that you get the health care your family deserves.

Florence Nightingale was an amazing figure. She created the American Red Cross. She saw the suffering from bad health conditions on the battlefield and in the military hospitals, and she fought like crazy to change the conditions; to make sure that the doctors washed their hands and practiced sanitary measures. She put herself at great risks.

It's unconscionable that cancer patients get the wrong diagnosis 30 percent of the time and that it takes so long to treat them with appropriate drugs for their cancer.

When I was born in 1970 with a rare genetic disorder called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita (SED), medical science wasn't what it is today and my mum and dad were treated terribly by the medical profession.

When I told my doctor I couldn't afford an operation, he offered to touch-up my X-rays.

Value in medicine depends on information - as I said in 'Let Patients Help,' 'People perform better when they're informed better.' It follows that to make patients and families more effective in care, they need to know more.

There's a culture inside the NHS that is highly paternalistic. You know, 'We give them the service and they are grateful.' We have to move to shared decision-making.

We will empower patients as well as health professionals. We will disempower the hierarchy and bureaucracy.

I'm a veteran. If I go into the V.A. hospital in Tennessee, I want to know that the procedures they're doing to me are being done properly. That is not unreasonable.

Without true medical liability reform, our doctors will continue to leave, and young doctors coming out of medical school $100,000 to $200,000 in debt will not be able to afford such onerous costs.

The politics have always been difficult in medicine. There is some truth in the way medical practice is portrayed in TV dramas.

As patients and consumers, we are better informed today about our health care than any previous generation.

I'm strongly for a patient Bill of Rights. Decisions ought to be made by doctors, not accountants.

We would like doctors to listen, but the fact is, we better be ready to be able to talk to them. You're going to have to be an active participant in that conversation, so I'd say the American people are going to need ways of stepping up to the conversation.

I had the privilege of practicing medicine in the early '60s, before we had any government. It worked rather well, and there was nobody on the street suffering with no medical care.

One of the most difficult things to contend with in a hospital is that assumption on the part of the staff that because you have lost your gall bladder you have also lost your mind.