Patient Education Quotes

Every cancer is different. The symptoms and treatments are different, and every human body deals with it differently. There are no formulas to it. That, I think, was the biggest takeaway for me.

The educator must above all understand how to wait; to reckon all effects in the light of the future, not of the present.

I like being on the side of healthcare consumer.

I was on the board of the Mayo Clinic. I was diagnosed there, and I could pick up the phone and get a hold of whoever I wanted to. What I learned is that you really have to get proactive and manage your case.

We've created a multitrillion-dollar edifice for dispensing the medical equivalent of lottery tickets - and have only the rudiments of a system to prepare patients for the near certainty that those tickets will not win. Hope is not a plan, but hope is our plan.

Our ad campaign with Pfizer is educational. Lipitor is the most widely prescribed drug in the country. For every prescription, there is a doctor writing it. It's a huge vote of confidence.

We are spending most of our time in American health care fixing the mistakes that either we in the profession are causing or our patients are, without recognizing it, causing to themselves.

I've started the John Ritter Foundation for Aortic Health. The big focus is helping people get the correct diagnoses.

There's a classic medical aphorism: 'Listen to the patient; they're telling you the diagnosis.' Actually, a lot of patients are just telling you a lot of rubbish, and you have to stop them and ask the pertinent questions. But, yes, in both drama and medicine, isolated facts can accumulate to create the narrative.

I don't think people were overmedicated, but I think health care cannot stop in the clinic. If all we do is throw pills and procedures at people after they're already sick and we don't deal with what's making them sick to start with, that's a real problem.

Brain surgery couldn't happen without the patient's own active voice to guide the work. The patient is part of the surgical team here, perhaps the most important part, and above all, that's what makes neurosurgery different.

Society as a whole is better off when information is available to the public. Whether you are talking about how to prevent disease, or about who does the best job of treating disease, it is useful to provide as much information to the public as possible.

Find a doctor who cares about you, because a big part of health care is caring.

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.

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

Take MediCal and Medicaid patients. All people have a right to quality care and they will teach you as much or more as your insurance and cash patients do.

Often doctors didn't even tell you what was wrong with you. They just treated you, and sent you home.

One fateful morning, I looked at myself in the mirror and realized that I shouldn't be operating on patients and then teaching them to eat to avoid me in the future; I should teach them to eat so that I wouldn't have to operate on them in the first place!

We need to transform our system so people know what they are paying for health care, so they know whether they are getting good quality health care, and so they have a reason and ability to care.

Patients know what patients want to know.

The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe - how to observe - what symptoms indicate improvement - what the reverse - which are of importance - which are of none - which are the evidence of neglect - and of what kind of neglect.

One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.

The most exquisite pleasure in the practice of medicine comes from nudging a layman in the direction of terror, then bringing him back to safety again.

How can we keep people healthy, and if they get sick, how can we treat them right the first time?

Our interaction as patients with the NHS should be on the basis that there's a presumption that all information is shared with us.