Abraham Verghese Quotes

Communication is everything, especially as a doctor, you need to communicate with your patients.

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

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.

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

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.

Physicians must discover the weaknesses of the human mind, and even condescend to humor them, or they will never be called in to cure the infirmities of the body.

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.

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

The physician...is the flower (such as it is) of our civilization.

If migraine patients have a common and legitimate second complaint besides their migraines, it is that they have not been listened to by physicians. Looked at, investigated, drugged, charged, but not listened to.

Doctors put a wall up between themselves and their patients; nurses broke it down.

Physicians mend or end us, Secundum artem; but although we sneer - In health - when ill we call them to attend us, Without the least propensity to jeer

Is it not also true that no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers or enjoins what is for the physician's interest, but that all seek the good of their patients? For we have agreed that a physician strictly so called, is a ruler of bodies, and not a maker of money, have we not?

My advice to the Sultan is to build hospitals for sick Muslims, with a staff of physicians and attendants who will cure them and minister to their needs

We sometimes think that the best doctors are the ones who have the most specialized knowledge or the fanciest degrees, but in fact, study upon study, including one published in the 'New England Journal of Medicine,' show that the best doctors are the ones who also know how to connect with their patients.

First and foremost, we must take a more holistic view of patient care journeys and then better integrate workflows and technology so that the care experience is seamless and provided at the location where it makes most sense.

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.

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

It is fundamental when you are a doctor for a good doctor-patient relationship.

I find medicine is the best of all trades because whether you do any good or not you still. Get your money.

I grew up with a real appreciation about just how wonderful and intimate the relationship is between a doctor and a patient was and the sense that this was a noble profession.

I think if I had done anything else I would like to have been a doctor. This is the sort of polar opposition to being a writer, I suppose.

To a physician, each man, each woman, is an amplification of one organ.