People say that the most expensive piece of medical equipment is the doctor's pen. It's not that we make all the money. It's that we order all the money.
Interpretation
Doctors have control over significant resources in healthcare, which highlights the weight of their decisions.
This quote by Atul Gawande emphasizes the financial power held by doctors through their prescribing authority. It suggests that instead of merely earning high salaries, doctors significantly influence healthcare costs and the allocation of funds within the medical system, illustrating a deeper responsibility that comes with their role.
In practice
In a discussion about healthcare reform, you might say, 'As Atul Gawande noted, the most expensive piece of medical equipment is the doctor's pen, reminding us of the financial power doctors wield.'
A failure often does not have to be a failure at all. However, you have to be ready for it-will you admit when things go wrong? Will you take steps to set them right?-because the difference between triumph and defeat, you'll find, isn't about willingness to take risks. It's about mastery of rescue.
No one teaches you how to think about money in medical school or residency. Yet, from the moment you start practicing, you must think about it. You must consider what is covered for a patient and what is not.
Just using a checklist requires [doctors] to embrace different values from ones we've had, like humility, discipline, teamwork.
When I do an operation, it's half a dozen people. When it goes beautifully, it's like a symphony, with everybody playing their part.
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.
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.
I think I'm in the same mood as ever, but in some ways more mature. I guess you could say that, at 65, when you've seen the world shape up as I have, there are only two things you can do: laugh or kill yourself.
Everyone has the right to doubt everything as often as he pleases and the duty to do it at least once. No way of looking at things is too sacred to be reconsidered. No way of doing things is beyond improvement.
You have not forgotten to remember; You have remembered to forget. But people can forget to forget. That is just as important as remembering to remember - and generally more practical.
Only he who believes is obedient and only he who is obedient believes.
We attain freedom as we let go of whatever does not reflect our magnificence. A bird cannot fly high or far with a stone tied to its back. But release the impediment, and we are free to soar to unprecedented heights.
I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.