Quotes About Patients

In the case of health information, I spent twenty-five years practicing medicine, and I was all too familiar with the fact that information wasn't properly shared, so I wouldn't know exactly what was in the hospital records; patients would be lost. Computerization gives the opportunity to actually get the information much better.

Medicare is immune from the competitive pressures that force private insurers to pay attention to what patients and doctors want.

As a physician, I'm somewhat an advocate of patients. How come, before Mike Webster, no NFL player was told or knew that there was an intrinsic risk of brain damage from playing football?

It is very clear that the present system of innovation for medicines is very inefficient and really somewhat corrupt. It benefits shareholders over patients; it produces for the rich markets and not for the poor and does not produce for minority diseases.

It is generally accepted that harm from doctors—not including risks from hospital germs—accounts for more deaths than any single cancer.

But as for Rappaccini, it is said of him — and I, who know the man well, can answer for its truth — that he cares infinitely more for science than for mankind. His patients are interesting to him only as subjects for some new experiment. He would sacrifice human life, his own among the rest, or whatever else was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so much as a grain of mustard seed to the great heap of his accumulated knowledge.

In short, hysteria is a type of language in which communication is effected by means of pictures (or iconic signs), instead of by means of words (or conventional signs). Hysterical language thus resembles other picture languages, such as charades. Those who want to deal with so-called hysterical patients must therefore learn not how to diagnose or treat them, but how to understand their special idiom and how to translate it into ordinary language.

All one's neighbours are in the grip of some uncontrolled and uncontrollable fear. . . In lunatic asylums it is a well-known fact that patients are far more dangerous when suffering from fear than when moved by rage or hatred.

Even top caliber hospitals cannot escape medical mistakes that sometimes result in irreparable damage to patients.

Administering medications is the nursing activity most associated with errors.

We are so blessed with such good medic al care here that we often take it for granted. I should know. The patients I had today were hardly models of patience.

The placebo cures 30% of patients - no matter what they have.

The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.

Only half the patients who go into an abortion clinic come out alive.

but a hospital, it seemed, was a place for bodies, where bodies asserted their rights.

Well...he's back in an exam room. Should I get out a quarter? Everybody groaned. There was only one He out of the legions of male patients they treated, and coin bingo was typically how the staff decided who had to deal with him.

They show that roughly two-thirds of a group of neurotic patients will recover or improve to a marked extent within about two years of the onset of their illness, whether they are treated by means of psychotherapy or not.

Given one well-trained physician of the highest type he will do better work for a thousand people than ten specialists.

I'm not the typical doctor that gives patients what they want. I don't do that. I try to give them what I want as long as they're okay with that. I know what's going to match their face.

It was so frustrating to see ulcer patients having surgery, or even dying, when I knew a simple antibiotic treatment could fix the problem.

The smuggling and distribution of misbranded drugs and medical devices of uncertain foreign origin has the potential for serious harm to patients.

Because the NHS budget covers everybody, the money saved on one patient can be used to treat another. Declining to operate on a sick grandmother means there is more money available to treat sick children. Accordingly, protests about denied coverage tend to be muted. In the U.S. system, that trade-off doesn't apply; if an American insurance company refuses to pay $36,000 for Herceptin for one of its clients, the money saved is likely used to enhance profits.

Consider radiology. Technology is going to reduce the use of those machines because doctors aren't going to need to send patients two or three times for radiology. They're going to have access to what the previous specialist took. There's also going to be devices that are coming out that are much less costly.

Here's where the insurance companies really fail us. They over-pay hospitals, specialists and drug companies and then raise premiums to cover the costs. Further, when they pay hospitals 115% of what it should cost to care for a patient, they are paying for inefficiency that can be dangerous.