Physicians mend or end us, Secundum artem; but although we sneer - In health - when ill we call them to attend us, Without the least propensity to jeer
A half-educated physician is not valuable. He thinks he can cure everything.
Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.
In hospitals I feel palpable comfort. I feel the competence, the expertise, so much education and money, all of the supplies sterile, everything packaged, sealed tight. My fears evaporate when the automatic doors shush open.
Medical judgment can be taught - laboriously, in long periods of training - but it cannot be neatly handed over as the occasion demands it. It is the irreplaceable and untransferable contribution that the healer makes to the suffering individual who would be healed.
But we need a medical community that's trained and knowledgeable and working on advancement.
Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion. You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom. You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.
My opinion has always been that when it comes to deciding where specialist centres should be located, whether they are regional or national specialities, it should be done on clinical grounds.
The practice of medicine is a thinker's art the practice of surgery a plumber's.
They are the best physicians, who being great in learning most incline to the traditions of experience, or being distinguished in practice do not reflect the methods and generalities of art.
Part of what any good health-care professional does, including an advanced-practice nurse, is know when it is time to seek help from more experienced professionals. I'm a primary care doctor. It doesn't mean I know everything. When something is beyond my competency or expertise, I seek consultation from my colleagues.
The role I have always felt most at home in is being 'Dr. B.'
