Be willing to bend.
Healthcare isn’t a competition. It’s not a contest to see who can change a patient’s mind the quickest, or make someone “get it” the fastest. Medicine isn’t about convincing patients we’re right and they’re wrong.
It’s not about saying “I told you so.”
But this is sometimes how medicine is perceived, and how patients feel after interacting with their medical teams. The most effective medicine I’ve seen always involved negotiation and compromise, always involved finding some kind of middle ground. Perhaps it’s a negotiation between various consulting services or family members, or liberalizing diet restrictions for comfort and dignity knowing that aspiration is a risk.
It’s hard to put medicine into neat, prescribed, compact, rigid packages because at the end of the day, medicine is about people. And people never come in neat, prescribed, compact, rigid packages.
People are lively and chaotic and amazing and messy and sometimes terrified and easily overwhelmed.
And therefore, so is medicine.
Moments Matter MD 
Well said! Growing up with a southern “country” doctor in NYC I learned the secret to meaningful medical outcomes was hitting the sweet spot of having relationships meet up with medicine — when a doctor can wed these two, patient outcomes benefit.
Very proud of you!
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Absolutely! And thank you, I owe much of my love of science and medicine to you!
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