I Learned About A Lot Of Things

Don’t Let Yourself Be. Find Something New To Try, Something To Change. Count How Often It Succeeds And How Often It Doesn’t. Write About It. Ask A Patient Or A Colleague What They Think About It. See If You Can Keep The Conversation Going.

Making Systems Work Is The Great Task Of My Generation Of Physicians And Scientists. But I Would Go Further And Say That Making Systems Work - Whether In Healthcare, Education, Climate Change, Making A Pathway Out Of Poverty - Is The Great Task Of Our Generation As A Whole.

Arriving At An Acceptance Of One's Mortality Is A Process, Not An Epiphany.

The Striking Thing Is That Who Doesn't Really Have The Authority To Do Any Of This. It Can't Tell Governments What To Do. It Hires No Vaccinators, Distributes No Vaccine. It Is A Small Geneva Bureaucracy Run By Several Hundred International Delegates Whose Annual Votes Tell The Organization What To Do But Not How To Do It.…the Only Substantial Resource That Who Has Cultivated Is Information And Expertise.

Sometimes We Can Offer A Cure, Sometimes Only A Salve, Sometimes Not Even That. But Whatever We Can Offer, Our Interventions, And The Risks And Sacrifices They Entail, Are Justified Only If They Serve The Larger Aims Of A Person's Life. When We Forget That, The Suffering We Inflict Can Be Barbaric. When We Remember It The Good We Do Can Be Breathtaking.