Best 20 quotes of Jerome Groopman on MyQuotes

Even when there is no longer hope for the body, there is always hope for the soul.

False hope can lead to intemperate choices and flawed decision making. True hope takes into account the real threats that exist and seeks to navigate the best path around them.

Help, then, is the ballast that keeps us steady, that recognizes where along the path are the dangers and pitfalls that can throw us off; hope tempers fear so we can recognize dangers and then bypass or endure them.

Hope can be imagined as a domino effect, a chain reaction, each increment making the next increase more feasible... There are moments of fear and doubt that can deflate it.

Hope differs from optimism. Hope does not arise from being told to "think positively," or from hearing an overly rosy forecast. Hope, unlike optimism, is rooted in unalloyed reality.

Hope is the elevating feeling we experience when we see - in the mind's eye - a path to a better future.

Hope, true hope, has proved as important as any medication I might prescribe or any procedure I might perform.

I feel that I have to do everything better just to be judged as okay. It is something I wish I could let go of. It's something that I wish just wasn't there.

I had learned that every patient has the right to hope, despite long odds, and it was my role to help nurture that hope.

Many years before when I had serious back pain from a sports injury, the surgeons said they would explore my spine and "figure it out." Out of frustration I had impulsively opted for the procedure. They ended up fusing the vertebrae. It left me debilitated. In hindsight, I blamed myself more than the surgeons. I had pressed them for a solution when in fact none was apparent because the cause of the pain was obscure.

On average, physicians interrupt patients within eighteen seconds of when they begin telling their story.

The freedom of patient speech is necessary if the doctor is to get clues about the medical enigma before him. If the patient is inhibited, or cut off prematurely, or constrained into one path of discussion, then the doctor may not be told something vital. Observers have noted that, on average, physicians interrupt patients within eighteen seconds of when they begin telling their story.

There is an authentic biology of hope. Belief and expectation - the key elements of hope - can block pain by releasing the brain's endorphins and enkephalins, mimicking the effects of morphine.

To hope under the most extreme circumstances is an act of defiance that permits a person to live his life on his own terms. It is part of the human spirit to endure and give a miracle a chance to happen.

True hope is cleareyed. It sees all the difficulties that exist and all the potential for failure, but through that carves a realistic path to a better future.

A book is an experiment, and as with all experiments, there is a sense of uncertainty about how it will turn out.

Hope is one of our central emotions, but we are often at a loss when asked to define it. Many of us confuse hope with optimism, a prevailing attitude that "things turn out for the best." But hope differs from optimism. Hope does not arise from being told to "Think Positively," or from hearing an overly rosy forecast. Hope, unlike optimism, is rooted in unalloyed reality. Although there is no uniform definition of hope, I found on that seemed to capture what my patients had taught me. Hope is the elevating feeling we experience when we see - in the mind's eye- a path to a better future. Hope acknowledges the significant obstacles and deep pitfalls along that path. True hope has no room for delusion.

In the field of decision analysis, the utility or value that a person assigns to a particular outcome is termed his "preference." Researchers have found that patients often construct their preferences on the spot when the doctor gives a diagnosis and recommends a treatment. Such patients are something of a "blank slate" upon which the doctor can "write" his or her own preference. In this setting, the patient is especially susceptible to how the physician frames the pros and cons both the treatment. (p57)

... omniscience about life and death is not within a physician's purview. A doctor should never write off a person a priori.

True hope has no room for delusion.