Best 18 quotes in «medical students quotes» category

Be aware of the whole domain of sickness - be aware of its implications in human life - be aware of its farthest reach in the life of the patient as well as the lives of the next of kin - be aware of its deepest roots, for that very awareness is the very foundation of true diagnosis, which automatically brings along the awareness of wellness.

Being a doctor, you are not supposed to give vent to any signs of revulsion on encountering the most noxious of odours or the most gruesome of sights.

Being a doctor, is not simply about having an understanding of anatomy and sickness, rather it is about having an understanding of true wellness and more importantly, it is about understanding the intensity of the concern of the patient’s next of kin.

Hmm. Say, did that BMS has a hobby?' The head nurse picked up the chart, turned to the special section created by Pinkus, called 'Hobbies," and said, 'Nope. No hobby.' 'There,' said Pinkus. 'See? No hobby. He didn't have a hobby, do you understand? Do you have a hobby, Roy?' With some alarm I realized that I did not, and said so. 'You should have at least one.

For a patient to be fully treated by a doctor, the patient must be willing to put all psychological guards down and be vulnerable. And this can only happen if the patient can trust the doctor, and this trust can only be induced through the release of oxytocin, which can only be triggered in the patient's brain by the will of a doctor with a genuine act of kindness on the doctor's part.

I feel your body, your sick and scared body. And I feel how it must be different from how it was, and how it is different from mine.

The midpoint in medicine between excessive emotional involvement with patients and a complete lack of empathy is not a simple one to locate.

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch – hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into – some fearful, devastating scourge, I know – and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it. I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever – read the symptoms – discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it – wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance – found, as I expected, that I had that too, – began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically – read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee. ... I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck. I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I fancy I’m ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn by going to him now. “What a doctor wants,” I said, “is practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each.” So I went straight up and saw him, and he said: “Well, what’s the matter with you?” I said: “I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaid’s knee. Why I have not got housemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got.” And I told him how I came to discover it all. Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn’t expecting it – a cowardly thing to do, I call it – and immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out. I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist’s, and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back. He said he didn’t keep it. I said: “You are a chemist?” He said: “I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative stores and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me.” I read the prescription. It ran: “1 lb. beefsteak, with 1 pt. bitter beer every 6 hours. 1 ten-mile walk every morning. 1 bed at 11 sharp every night. And don’t stuff up your head with things you don’t understand.” I followed the directions, with the happy result – speaking for myself – that my life was preserved, and is still going on.

Not every sickness is psychosomatic, but a weak psyche can indeed make a sickness worse.

There is no painkiller as effective as love, no anti-depressant as soothing as cheer, no defibrillator as powerful as wisdom.

There may be medical tools in your hands to treat the patient, but those hands must be that of a loving, warm and conscientious human being.

The world doesn't need more smart doctors, it needs more warm and wise doctors. Be the wisdom yourself - be the warmth yourself, and be the doctor that the doctors have forgotten to be, for it is time to save medicine, to save humanity.

Understanding sickness in its whole form, reach and impact, automatically brings along the insight into wellness, just like understanding chaos with all its nuances brings along the true practical perception of harmony and the means to achieve it.

Wellness is not the lack of sickness, but the capacity to overcome sickness.

A doctor should be a clown at heart, a scientist at brain and a mother at conscience.

A life saved is a family saved.

The surgeon, hand tired, asked me if I'd like to take over. Foggy, I did. I got my hand around the back of the young lifeless heart and squeezed. Tough, slippery, the sinewy muscle was a leather bag, filled with blood, rolling in the steamy chest cavity, tied to the tubes of the major vessels. Why was I doing this? My hand hurt. I gave up. The heart lay like a grayish-blue fruit on a tree of bones. Sickening. The face of the BMS was blue, turning white. The gash in his chest was bright red, turning to a clotted black. We'd ruined his body, even as he'd died. As I left the room, I heard Jo yell out with crisp authority: 'Any BMS students here? This is a chance you don't get often in your training, to learn to massage the heart. Great teaching case. Come on.

A doctor's mission should not be to prevent death, but more importantly it should be to improve the quality of life.