Mary Roach Quotes

Using medicine in the service of cosmesis is generally bad for patients, bad for doctors, and bad for democracy. The only exceptions are when we know the intervention will actually reduce suffering, as with a primary cleft lip repair.

I temporarily became a surgeon for 'Memory of Love'. I spent two weeks in an operating theatre, watching amputations, and I loved it.

As a plastic surgeon, I know the skin better than anybody because I see it in all the different layers.

First of all, you want to make sure you find a doctor that is a board-certified specialist in whatever that field is - whatever it is - whether it's plastic surgery, facial plastic surgery, ocular plastic surgery, brain surgery, whatever it is. And two, if they do a procedure, you want to make sure they do a lot of it.

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

Once you start to provide public services that have to be run under public rules, for example child protection, then it has to go with public law. Institutions have to make a decision whether they want to do that or they don't want to do that.

I worry about how accessible cosmetic surgery has become. Of course, if it has genuinely helped people, and their confidence has grown as a result; who am I to form an opinion?

With tens of thousands of patients dying every year from preventable medical errors, it is imperative that we embrace available technologies and drastically improve the way medical records are handled and processed.

You know, everyone is always talking about plastic surgery, or the technology, what to do. I really think it's important to help yourself with the technology if you want to feel better, but I am absolutely against any kind of monstrous cuts of the body, lifting that is beyond recognition, this kind of stuff.

At heart, I'm a reconstructive surgeon.

My thinking about plastic surgery is this. I haven't had it, but never say never. Because when you do, you are definitely going to go there.

Americans spend more money on Botox, face lifts and tummy tucks than on the age-old scourges of polio, small pox and malaria.

With plastic surgery, the general anesthetic is like a black-velvety sleep, and that's what death is - without waking up to someone clapping and going, 'Joan, wake up, it's all over and you're looking pretty'.

I have spent too long with too many people who have lost loved ones to healthcare-associated infections not to be determined to act on this. There is no tolerable level of preventable infections. The only acceptable strategy is a zero-tolerance strategy.

No one looks at your hands to see how much they shake when you are interviewed to be a surgeon. The physical skills required are no greater than for writing cursive script. If an operation requires so much skill only a few surgeons can do it, you modify the operation to make it simpler.

Safe care saves lives and saves money. Adverse events like high levels of infection, blood clots or falls in hospital, emergency readmissions and pressure sores cost the NHS billions of pounds every year. There is a serious human cost, too, with patients ending up injured, or even dead. Most are avoidable with the right care.

Healthcare providers will compete to offer the best record of patient safety at the lowest prices. Hospitals and patients will benefit from having accurate information about areas of excellence and areas that must be improved.

I've had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware.

I've had a face-lift. I've had my eyes done; liposuction; the nose job - well, that was a long time ago.

You want to ensure people can do it right 99 percent of time. When we have to fire one of our surgical trainees, it is never because they don't have the physical skills but because they don't have the moral skills - to practise and admit failure.

I thought that plastic surgery was easy, but it is really serious and is not something you want to mess around with.

The best surgeon, like best general, is he who makes the fewest mistakes.

A whole range of things are done to ensure services remain safe and sustainable because that is the absolute paramount duty of the health board.

I think I'm a good actor, but to replicate tens of thousands of man hours in surgery is really hard.

If we are going to keep patients safe, then we have to make sure that doctors are able to learn from mistakes.