Quotes About Priorities

doctors need to understand that we are businessmen—nothing less, nothing more—and the sooner we accept this the better.

The question therefore is... how can we build a health care system that will actually help people achieve what's most important to them at the end of their lives

Home is the one place where your own priorities hold sway. At home, you decide how you spend your time, how you share your space, and how you manage your possessions.

The key word in her mind was home. Home is the one place where your own priorities hold sway. At home, you decide how you spend your time, how you share your space, and how you manage your possessions. Away from home, you don't. This loss of freedom was what people like Lou Sanders and Wilson's mother, Jessie, dreaded. Wilson

What do they understand their prognosis to be, what are their concerns about what lies ahead, what kinds of trade-offs are they willing to make, how do they want to spend their time if their health worsens, who do they want to make decisions if they can't?

When our time is limited and we are uncertain about how best to serve our priorities, we are forced to deal with the fact that both the experiencing self and the remembering self matter. We do not want to endure long pain and short pleasure. Yet certain pleasures can make enduring suffering worthwhile. The peaks are important, and so is the ending.

not the difference between treating and doing nothing, she explained. The difference was in the priorities. In ordinary medicine, the goal is to extend life. We'll sacrifice the quality of your existence now—by performing surgery, providing chemotherapy, putting you in intensive care—for the chance of gaining time later. Hospice deploys nurses, doctors, chaplains, and social workers to help people with a fatal illness have the fullest possible lives right now—

Paul O'Neill, the former secretary of the Treasury and CEO of the aluminum giant Alcoa, agreed to take over as head of a regional health care initiative in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And he made solving the problem of hospital infections one of his top priorities.

What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?

they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one's story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone's lives. Inevitably

our most cruel failure in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognize that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one's story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone's lives.

What were her biggest fears and concerns? What goals were most important to her? What trade-offs was she willing to make, and what ones was she not? Not

I need to understand how much you're willing to go through to have a shot at being alive and what level of being alive is tolerable to you.

pay doctors to give chemotherapy and to do surgery but not to take the time required to sort out when to do so is unwise.

The options overwhelmed her. They all sounded terrifying. She didn't know what to do. I realized, with shame, that I'd reverted to being Dr. Informative—here are the facts and figures; what do you want to do? So I stepped back and asked the questions I'd asked my father: What were her biggest fears and concerns? What goals were most important to her? What trade-offs was she willing to make, and what ones was she not? Not

The key word in her mind was home. Home is the one place where your own priorities hold sway. At home, you decide how you spend your time, how you share your space, and how you manage your possessions. Away from home, you don't. This loss of freedom was what people like Lou Sanders and Wilson's mother, Jessie, dreaded.

What were her biggest fears and concerns? What goals were most important to her? What trade-offs was she willing to make, and what ones was she not?

Emanuels described a third type of doctor-patient relationship, which they called "interpretive." Here the doctor's role is to help patients determine what they want. Interpretive doctors ask, "What is most important to you? What are your worries?" Then, when they know your answers, they tell you about the red pill and the blue pill and which one would most help you achieve your priorities.

Our most cruel failure is in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognise that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one's story is essential to sustaining meaning in life.

It seems we've succumbed to a belief that, once you lose your physical independence, a life of worth and freedom is simply not possible. Nursing home staff like, and approve of, residents who are "fighters" and show "dignity and self-esteem"—until these traits interfere with the staff's priorities for them. Then they are "feisty.

But the dismal finances of geriatrics are only a symptom of a deeper reality: people have not insisted on a change in priorities.

Laten we op zoek gaan naar 'vreugde' in plaats van naar eerlijk voedsel en schone lucht en een gezondere toekomst op een bewoonbare planeet! Alsof geluk volstaat om ons te beschermen tegen de gevolgen van winst-waanzin.

I know I got to eat. But I got to live too.

The person who loses their ability to walk will care more about the brownies than about the walking. Because if they have lost the ability to walk, they have accepted the loss. Walking was then, brownies are now. You would be amazed by what you can give up, lose, or break and yet still be a person who gets happy over brownies. It only seems like I am kidding.