Friday, October 21, 2016

Sulzberger on Caring for Patients

Yoon Cohen sent this quotation to us.  Readers of VGRD will appreciate it:


I know of no better way to start teaching a student of medicine than by repeating over and over the old-time physician's concept of his responsibilities toward his patients: to cure sometimes; to help often; to comfort always.



Perhaps the most fundamental requirement to become a more than ordinary practitioner is to be able to put yourself as wholly as possible into the patient's place. This is not as easy to do as it sounds. I told my young colleagues: "As you sit opposite your patient, try to think about his or her problems so intensely that you lift yourself mentally into his shoes, his seat, his pants, his home, his work, his problems."



They were told over and over again: "Every patient who comes to us is in trouble. Whether the complaint seems serious or trivial to you, it is serious to the patient and deserves your full attention and your best efforts. You may have just seen ten patients with more grave or more interesting skin diseases, but to the patient you are now examining, his trouble is the most important in the world at that moment. You must be kind and patient even with those who are over-demanding, unreasonable, even antagonistic. Remember that those attitudes too are signs of illness and often the results of fear, anxiety, or ignorance."  

Marion B. Sulzberger

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