All the quotes below are from "How Doctors Think" by Jerome Groopman. This book took me 6 months to finish reading and digest it. Just want to jot down some sentences which catch my eyes while reading. Hoping that I manage to read other books which soothe my mind and give me a sense of tranquility inside.
Here are the following sentences copied:
The great danger is that you stop caring. The goal of each day and each night was simply to clear the desks, rather than to deliberately and expertly care for those who needed care and reassure those who did not.
The hardest thing about being a doctor is that you learn best from your mistakes, mistakes made on living people.
Most errors are mistakes in thinking. and part of what causes these cognitive errors is our inner feelings, feelings we do not readily admit to and often don't even recognize.
The perfect is the enemy of good.
If he recommends a procedure,patients can ask why,what might be found,with what probability, and , importantly, how much difference it will make to find it. Some physician will be uneasy, some even angry because they may not have all the answers. Others will take the time and clearly respond to these simple, direct, reasonable questions.The kind of respond illuminates how much the doctor really knows about your case, and how much still needs to be discovered.
Just because you can't treat someone any longer for his cancer doesn't mean that you stop treating him. In fact, it is at this stage that treatment can be most challenging, how to balance therapy with medications to control pain without so narcotizing a person that he is unaware of his surroundings and unable to communicate with loved ones;how to give words of comfort while speaking the truth, acknowledging that while end is approaching, the person can still make a difference in the lives of others.
I do not know how true is it as I have not gone through my clinical years but it makes sense at certain point.
Just don't forget to have FUN!!Go go fighting!!
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