Bedside Manner Quotes

Taking a lady's hand gives her confidence in her physician.

I think my father gave me a great reverence for medical science. He was about as opposite to the personality of House as one could imagine. He was polite and easygoing, and would have gone to great lengths to make his patients feel attended to and heard and sympathized with.

Do you think that was kind? Do you think it was godlike? What would you think of a physician, if a woman came to him distressed and said, "Doctor, come to my daughter, she is very ill. She has lost her reason, and she is all I have!" What would you think of the doctor who would not reply at all at first, and then, when she fell at his feet and worshiped him, answered that he did not spend his time doctoring dogs? Would you like him as a family physician?

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.

With Alzheimer's patients, you have to be very careful what you say when you're looking at them over their bed. Because once in a while, they understand it.

Every physician must be rich in knowledge, and not only of that which is written in books; his patients should be his book, they will never mislead him.

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

I feel like if I had my personality but was an OB/GYN, you would be psyched. You'd be like, 'My chatty, pop-culture-interested but plainspoken, wants-to-talk-about-clothes but serious-minded doctor.' I feel like I would clean up with patients. That's kind of a cocky thing to say.

I was good at being a doctor; my patients liked me. At times people trust you with things they wouldn't tell their spouses. It was a real privilege.

I'm a terrible patient, and I find that doctors can be very condescending.

The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.

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

What we have now is doctors who are actually better technically at what they're doing in their specialty than 30 or 40 years ago, but we lost the relationship, when the doctor would look people in the eye and say, 'I care about you. We can do this together.'

No," I replied testily. "I'm pretty sure 'digital' is Latin for 'fingeral,' so finger cancer equals digital cancer. This is all basic anatomy, Dr. Roland." The Dr. Roland told me that he thought I was overreacting, and the "fingeral" wasn't even a real word. Then I told him that I though he was underreacting, probably because he's embarrassed that he doesn't know how Latin works. Then he claimed that "underrecating" isn't a word either. The man has a terrible bedside manner.

A physician should take his fee without letting his left hand know what his right is doing; it should be taken without a thought, without a look, without a move of the facial muscles; the true physician should hardly be aware that the last friendly grasp of the hand has been made more precious by the touch of gold

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.

A lot of medical problems are solved if doctors are nice to patients. If you can make them think positive, you may not need medication.

One night, I remember being really sick in bed with chills and a fever when Ann came in all excited and said, 'I have these lyrics! Let me read them to you!' They were the lyrics to 'Crazy on You,' and in my fever haze I said, 'Yeah! Those are really good!'

I would bend over backward to be back on Grey's. Any day, I'll choose lying in bed with Katherine Heigl looking over me over getting thrown against walls by supernatural persons at 5 in the morning.

Hardy Cates," I said, coming into the room, "you behave, or I'll step on your tube." The nurse seemed taken aback by my unsympathetic bedside manner. But Hardy's gaze met mine in a moment of bright, hot voltage, and he relaxed, reassured in a way that cooing sympathy could never have done. "That only works if it's a breathing tube," he told me.

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

I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient whose care I am taking over is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient; it's only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.

I love to take care of people, which is why I went to nursing school.

The physician must have at his command a certain ready wit, as dourness is repulsive both to the healthy and the sick.

My dad was a physician. As a kid, I remember driving around with him on weekends so he could do his rounds at the hospital and talk to patients. We'd spend time in the car talking about what was going on with them, their stories.