We're losing a ritual. We're losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of the doctor-patient relationship and the transformative power of rituals in healthcare.
Abraham Verghese highlights the significance of rituals in the doctor-patient relationship, suggesting that these practices are not merely routine but hold the potential to transform and elevate the interaction between healthcare providers and patients. He argues that as we lose these rituals, we risk diminishing the depth and quality of these essential human connections in medicine, which are fundamental to healing.
In practice
During a medical conference, discussing the importance of maintaining rituals in patient care.
The flip side of suicide is that it leaves a lingering question in the minds of the people who survived. It's like a cancer that's metastasized. The suicide is the cancer and the metastasis is all these people saying, Why? Why? Why?
I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient whose care I am taking over is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient; it's only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.
It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.
My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.
You are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can can play the 'Gloria'? No, not Bach's 'Gloria.' Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.
Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school - not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.
Spend time with those you love. One of these days you will say either, 'I wish I had', or 'I'm glad I did.'
The only way a relationship will last is if you see it as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.
Trust is a product of vulnerability that grows over time and requires work, attention, and full engagement.
... I didn't know whether to feel angry at her for making me part of her suicide or just to feel angry at myself for letting her go.
Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life.
Ive lived and worked in developing countries so Im particularly interested in helping women in oppressive societies. Our problems can pale in comparison to theirs, the more we can do to empower them, the better off all women will be.
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