Top 98 Doctor Patient Quotes
#1. The doctor-patient relationship is critical to the placebo effect.
Irving Kirsch
#2. I think people are by-and-large happy with the providers that they have got now. They treasure that doctor-patient relationship.
Bob McDonnell
#3. Traditional medical ethics, based on the doctor-patient relationship must be changed ... The primary function of health care regulations should be to limit an individuals own decision-making!
Donald Berwick
#4. Prior to passage of Obamacare, Americans spoke out against the individual mandate; they didn't want to change the health care they had; they didn't want a 3,000-page bill that empowered 15 Washington bureaucrats to decide the future of the doctor-patient relationship.
Fred Upton
#5. While someday the computerization of medicine will surely be that long-awaited "disruptive innovation," today it's often just plain disruptive: of the doctor-patient relationship, of clinicians' professional interactions and work flow, and of the way we measure and try to improve things. I
Robert Wachter
#6. Cancer affects all of us, whether you're a daughter, mother, sister, friend, coworker, doctor, patient.
Jennifer Aniston
#7. I suppose the doctor-patient relationship has that idea of transference. I think it's a special thing that doctors have. We all find doctors sexy. That's why there are so many TV shows about doctors.
Michael Fassbender
#8. Certainly the primary imperative of a physician is to be skilled in medical science, but if he or she does not probe a patient's soul, then the doctor's care is given without caring, and part of the sacred mission of healing is missing.
Jerome Groopman
#9. The integration of exponentially growing technologies is beginning to empower the patient, enable the doctor, enhance wellness and begin to cure the well before they get sick.
Daniel Kraft
#10. I have an obligation to use what I know to try to bring real, usable medical science to every doctor and bedside and patient.
Patrick Soon-Shiong
#11. "Tell me, doctor, " said the patient, "when I stand on my head, the blood rushes to it. Why doesn't it rush to my feet now?" "That's because your feet aren't empty," said the doctor.
Sam Ewing
#12. I don't want anybody between a doctor and a patient - not an insurance company bureaucrat or a Washington bureaucrat.
John Barrasso
#13. You say you felt a presence, but I only sensed an absence. A vague pain without a source. I was like a patient who cannot tell the doctor where it hurts, only that it does.
Khaled Hosseini
#14. The doctor, if he forgets he is only the assistant to nature and zealously takes over the stage, may so add to what nature is already doing well that he actually throws the patient into shock by the vigour he adds to nature's forces.
Herbert Ratner
#15. The witch doctor succeeds for the same reason all the rest of us succeed. Each patient carries his or her own doctor inside him or her. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work.
Albert Schweitzer
#16. Healthcare should be between the doctor and the patient. And if the doctor says something needs to be done, the government should guarantee it gets paid for.
Michael Moore
#17. The doctor says to the patient, "Take your clothes off and stick your tongue out the window". "What will that do" asks the patient. The doctor says "I'm mad at my neighbor!".
Henny Youngman
#18. The doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.
William Osler
#19. ...that the doctor being himself a mortal man, should be diligent and tender in relieving his suffering patients, inasmuch as he himself must one day be a like sufferer.
Thomas Sydenham
#20. Testing stools for C. diff in patients after they have finished their Flagyl or Vanco for 10 days and after their bowel movements have returned to normal (that is, formed and not watery) is a waste of time and money, and is not helpful to the doctor or patient.
J. Thomas LaMont
#21. Tidy fees are the most effective remedy, both for the doctor and the patient.
Dario Fo
#22. What a doctor or healer tells you is a reflection of the beliefs and expectations you hold. Change your beliefs and you change the prognosis. Who is the doctor? The mind of the patient.
Alan Cohen
#23. I've always been interested in medicine and was pleased when my brother became a doctor. But after thinking seriously about that field, I realized that what intrigued me was not the science, not the chemistry or biology of medicine, but the narrative - the story of each patient, each illness.
Lois Lowry
#24. It was, I suspected, not the first time that a patient had consoled a doctor about the ineffectuality of his discipline.
Siddhartha Mukherjee
#25. I always like to say just think you were a doctor with only one patient. You might understand how that person gets sick, how they get better, but you understand nothing about the progression of disease or how humans in general get ill. Now take an Earth scientist: you only have one planet to study.
Ellen Stofan
#26. I had traversed the line from doctor to patient, from actor to acted upon, from subject to direct object.
Paul Kalanithi
#27. If you don't want me to attend the patient I'll go.'
'But she can't see a doctor now.'
'Why not?'
'She isn't well.
P.G. Wodehouse
#28. He rested his head on top of mine and whispered, "I'm warning you now. I'm a horrible patient."
I smiled in spite of myself and pulled back. "Of course you are. That's why you're a doctor.
Lisa Kessler
#29. If you're a doctor, what do you promise to do? First, do no harm. If your operating philosophy is do no harm, that's not a call to imagination. Not only that, if I'm a patient, I don't want your imagination. I want what works.
Jay S. Walker
#30. The patient suffers; the family threatens; the colleagues frown; the nurse laughs; Death grins; and the young doctor dances a crazy jig amid the tumult, though once he dreamed he would glide along the floor with Death in a perfectly controlled tango.
Bert Keizer
#31. I'm at the eye doctor. I'm always at the eye doctor. It's like this is my profession. I am no longer a writer, I'm now an optomoligical patient. By the way, this job doesn't pay well.
John Green
#32. As a medical doctor, it is my duty to evaluate the situation with as much data as I can gather and as much expertise as I have and as much experience as I have to determine whether or not the wish of the patient is medically justified.
Jack Kevorkian
#33. It seems that part of the moral constitution of a doctor is a commitment not to intend the death of a patient, and to protect them from harm.
David Jeffrey
#34. I think if the doctor is a good doctor and has a patient's best interest in mind then he's not going to allow anything to compromise that patient's care. The bottom line is the doctor has to care for his patient. You have to have that overwhelming sense of welfare for your patient.
Charles Teo
#35. Time is the great doctor of your life. You have to respect the doctor. The devouring self is the patient. Listen to the doctor.
Ruben Papian
#36. Doctor: I have some good news and some bad news. Patient: What's the good news? Doctor: The tests you took showed that you have twenty-four hours to live. Patient:That's the good news? What's the bad news? Doctor: I forgot to call you yesterday.
Thomas Cathcart
#37. The purpose of a doctor or any human in general should not be to simply delay the death of the patient, but to increase the person's quality of life.
Patch Adams
#38. I always knew I wanted to be a doctor, but I also knew that being a doctor meant more than treating just the patient in front of you.
Risa Lavizzo-Mourey
#39. I once wrote that Lord Moran, Churchill's doctor, had doctored his diaries as well as his famous patient. That was true but unfair. Although their authenticity as contemporary, daily accounts is often questionable, the observations are quite wonderful.
Nigel Hamilton
#40. I am like a doctor. I have written a prescription to help the patient. If the patient doesn't want all the pills I've recommended, that's up to him. But I must warn that next time I will have to come as a surgeon with a knife.
Javier Perez De Cuellar
#42. I grew up with a real appreciation about just how wonderful and intimate the relationship is between a doctor and a patient was and the sense that this was a noble profession.
Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey
#43. I really discovered I had thyroid disease by accident. My son was having some health concerns, and as I filled out his patient history I noticed I had a lot of similar symptoms. I mentioned it to the doctor, and he ran blood work and finally an ultrasound of my thyroid.
Kim Alexis
#44. The best colleague any doctor can have is a more fully informed patient and family.
James J. Rybacki
#45. Before asserting a prognosis on any patient, always be objective and never subjective. For telling a man that he will win the treasure of life, but then later discovering that he will lose, will harm him more than by telling him that he may lose, but then he wins.
Suzy Kassem
#46. Many medical students, like most American patients, confuse science and technology. They think that what it means to be a scientific doctor is to bring to bear the maximum amount of technology on any given patient. And this makes them dangerous.
Alice Dreger
#47. Never congratulate a doctor for the fast recovery of a patient.
Raheel Farooq
#48. He very word "patient" implies passivity and powerlessness. Me-teacher-you-dumbbell, or me-doctor-you-patient, or me-politician-you-voter, or any other paternalistic or maternalistic stay-in-your-place tradition will not pass muster with me.
Andrew Saul
#49. The doctor may also learn more about the illness from the way the patient tells the story than from the story itself.
James B. Herrick
#50. The fears are unanimous. ObamaCare is too expensive. It is a government takeover of our healthcare system. Services will be diminished. The patient-doctor relationship will be eliminated. It will not make healthcare more affordable. And it will bankrupt small businesses.
Joseph M. Kyrillos
#52. A doctor is a man who writes prescriptions, till the patient either dies or is cured by nature.
John Taylor
#53. Look at your life as a patient and a doctor!
Tae Yun Kim
#54. Let no one suppose that the words doctor and patient can disguise from the parties the fact that they are employer and employee.
George Bernard Shaw
#55. We have Dragon [dictation software]," one primary care doctor said, "which you have to be careful of, because I just [dictated] 'Patient's prostate is bothering him' and it turned out 'Patient's prostitute is bothering him.
Robert Wachter
#56. The patient is not likely to recover who makes the doctor his heir.
Thomas Fuller
#57. As a resident, my highest ideal was not saving lives -- everyone dies eventually -- but guiding a patient or family to an understanding of death or illness.
Paul Kalanithi
#58. Going to the doctor - at least this doctor - was like going to the hairdresser. The client (patient) has to let the professional know what she wants out of each visit. The patient is in charge.
Barry Schwartz
#59. The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his (sic)patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease
Thomas Jefferson
#60. Dear doctor, you must not only let the patient tells his story, but you should also try to understand it.
William C. Brown
#61. Few things a doctor does are more important than relieving pain ... pain is soul destroying. No patient should have to endure intense pain unnecessarily. The quality of mercy is essential to the practice of medicine; here, of all places, it should not be strained.
Marcia Angell
#62. God bless the physician who warms the speculum or holds your hand and looks into your eyes. Perhaps one subtext of the health caredebate is a yen to be treated like a whole person, not just an eye, an ear, a nose or a throat. A yen to be human again, on the part of patient and doctor alike.
Anna Quindlen
#63. In the European Union, the relationship between politicians and the fishing industry has become like that of a doctor assisting the suicide of a patient.
Callum Roberts
#64. Fundamentalists who say they are not going to pay any attention to the charts are like a doctor who says he's not going to take a patient's temperature.
Bruce Kovner
#68. [the doctor] clicked by mistake on the notes of a patient she'd got to know well - too well. The unfortunate Mrs. Swayne had become unhealthily doctor-dependent. But had she grasped the nettle? Had she actually finally and against all predictions left the country?
Jane Wilson-Howarth
#69. Now doctors access patient messages via a mobile or Web application, and the message automatically becomes part of a conversation. Under the new system, the whole care team is aware of what is happening, and the doctor has the patient's history available when fielding questions.
Anonymous
#70. Within every patient there resides a doctor, and we as physicians are at our best when we we put our patients in touch with the doctor inside themselves.
Albert Schweitzer
#71. A doctor who doesn't say too many foolish things is a patient half-cured.
Marcel Proust
#72. The difficulty with becoming a patient is that as soon as you get horizontal, part of your being yearns, not for a doctor, but for a medicine man.
Shana Alexander
#73. If I were a doctor, I would diagnose his condition thus: "The patient is suffering from nostalgic insufficiency.
Milan Kundera
#74. Doctor's recommendation to patient. Underneath that was scrawled: Don't do cocaine.
Belle Aurora
#75. I cough. "Oh, doctor. I think I'm sick I need some penis-cilin." I fake cough again into my hand. "Poor patient. What will I ever do?" He shoots me a crooked smile and I begin to pant in torturous anticipation.
S.K. Logsdon
#76. Neurosis has an absolute genius for malingering. There is no illness which it cannot counterfeit perfectly. If it is capable of deceiving the doctor, how should it fail to deceive the patient
Marcel Proust
#78. I am the candidate of tax cuts, repealing Obamacare, repealing Dodd-Frank, letting the markets work, coming up with patient-and-doctor-centered healthcare solutions instead of more big government - and just generally getting government off the backs of small businesses.
Wendy E. Long
#79. The key is to cut out the middleman and empower both doctor and patient with information about what things cost.
Ben Carson
#80. Medical liability reform is not a Republican or Democrat issue or even a doctor versus lawyer issue. It is a patient issue.
John Ensign
#81. [The doctor] peeked into the trauma room and saw the situation: the clerk - that is, me - standing next to the orderly, Georgie, both of us on drugs, looking down at a patient with a knife sticking up out of his face.
'What seems to be the trouble?' he asked.
Denis Johnson
#82. The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account.
David Ogilvy
#83. The punishment should fit the crime and if a doctor or drug company does harm knowingly or negligently to a patient they should be compensated to make them whole.
Corrine Brown
#84. Doctor(to patient): Give me your parent's number so that we can tell them what a bad boy you have been.
Patient(Confused, unwilling): You don't need to.
Doctor:Hospital Rules!!! And no matter how much i hate dead people, I hate Unpaid bills more
Durjoy Datta
#85. I always feel like a doctor who loses a patient on the operating table or something where I felt just devastated and I beat myself up until I get to try it the next night and "I'll get it better tonight." So I'm hard on myself. I think I'm not alone in that regard with acting.
Allison Janney
#86. When I took the Hippocratic oath and was effectively 'sworn in' as a doctor, I took the same vow that doctors have taken for generations. Patient autonomy is core to this oath.
Ami Bera
#87. Worries about the power of a doctor's suggestions to influence and shape his patient's mind, whether they are made under hypnosis or not, are still with us.
Siri Hustvedt
#88. A really conscientious doctor ought to die with his patient. The captain goes down with his ship.
Eugene Ionesco
#89. There's such a void in the medical system. When my husband was sick, it became very apparent to me that the nurses were doing the doctor's job, and the doctors were doing the disease job, so no one was caring for the patient and the loved one.
Donna Karan
#90. How many crumpets, at a sittin', do you think 'ud kill me off at once?" says the patient. "I don't know," says the doctor. "Do you think half-a-crown's wurth 'ud do it?" says the patient. "I think it might," says the doctor.
Charles Dickens
#91. Simple intervention - the time spent with a patient - is a very powerful ingredient of the patient-doctor contract. The evidence is against the traditions such as surgery for back pain being true - the evidence says it doesn't work.
Marni Jackson
#92. The need is to recognize that The patient is the healer, Not the doctor.
Norman Cousins
#93. When we go to our meeting with God, we should go like a patient to his doctor, first to be thoroughly examined and afterwards to be treated for our ailment. Then something will happen when you pray.
Ole Hallesby
#94. The medicalization of early diagnosis not only hampers and discourages preventative health-care but it also trains the patient-to-be to function in the meantime as an acolyte to his doctor. He learns to depend on the physician in sickness and in health. He turns into a life-long patient.
Ivan Illich
#95. Whether it's possible or not, being a doctor, you take an oath. To care for your patient, not to kill them. You take an oath to do things that are proper in the medical world. Not to administer something outside of a hospital setting that's not even your area.
Jermaine Jackson
#96. The doctor knows that it is the prescription slip itself, even more than what is written on it, that is often the vital ingredient for enabling a patient to get rid of whatever is ailing him.
Norman Cousins
#97. The patient says, "Doctor, it hurts when I do this." "Then don't do that!"
Henny Youngman
