The Definition Of What It Means To

People Who Reach Certain Levels Of Frailty, More Important Than Getting Their Mammogram, More Important Than Getting Their Blood Pressure Tweaked, They're At High Risk Of Falling. If They Fall And Break Their Hip, They Not Only Die Sooner, They Die Miserably.

Courage Is Strength In The Face Of Knowledge Of What Is To Be Feared Or Hoped. Wisdom Is Prudent Strength.

We Look For Medicine To Be An Orderly Field Of Knowledge And Procedure. But It Is Not. It Is An Imperfect Science, An Enterprise Of Constantly Changing Knowledge, Uncertain Information, Fallible Individuals, And At The Same Time Lives On The Line. There Is Science In What We Do, Yes, But Also Habit, Intuition, And Sometimes Plain Old Guessing. The Gap Between What We Know And What We Aim For Persists. And This Gap Complicates Everything We Do.

We've Created A Multitrillion-dollar Edifice For Dispensing The Medical Equivalent Of Lottery Tickets - And Have Only The Rudiments Of A System To Prepare Patients For The Near Certainty That Those Tickets Will Not Win. Hope Is Not A Plan, But Hope Is Our Plan.

I Learned About A Lot Of Things In Medical School, But Mortality Wasn't One Of Them.