Human Interaction Is The Key Force In

When [disease] Can't Be Stopped, That's Where We Become Lost.

Writing Lets You Step Back And Think Through A Problem. Even The Angriest Rant Forces The Writer To Achieve A Degree Of Thoughtfulness.

Once You Start To Ask Patients About Their Priorities, You Discover What They're Living For. Once You Uncover That, It Helps You, As A Doctor, Decide What To Fight For. And When We Do That, We Often End Up Identifying Limits To The Kind Of Care That People Want. One's Assumption Is That These People Are Going To Live Shorter Lives, But What We're Doing Is Protecting Quality Of Life. In Doing So, You Sometimes End Up Helping People Live Longer. Certainly, You Help People Live Better Days And With More Purpose In Their Lives.

Just Look At The List Of Who The Lowest-paid People Are. Pediatricians Are At The Bottom. You Would Also Look At Internists. You Would Look At Psychiatrists. You Would Look At Family Physicians, Hiv Specialists. People Who Take Care Of Chronic Illnesses By Seeing People Carefully Over Time, Those Are The People Who Get The Least Money. The People Who Have The Most Are People Like Orthopedic Surgeons, Interventional Cardiologists. And My Point Isn't That There Is Something Wrong With Heroism.

At Times, In Medicine, You Feel You Are Inside A Colossal And Impossibly Complex Machine Whose Gears Will Turn For You Only According To Their Own Arbitrary Rhythm. The Notion That Human Caring, The Effort To Do Better For People, Might Make A Difference Can Seem Hopelessly Naive. But It Isn't.