People think you go to doctors for their knowledge. You don't go to doctors for their knowledge. You go to doctors for their judgment, their instinct, what to do, how to make the right call.
Sunday-the doctor's paradise! Doctors at country clubs, doctors at the seaside, doctors with mistresses, doctors with wives, doctors in church, doctors in yachts, doctors everywhere resolutely being people, not doctors.
The public relies on the advice of doctors and leading researchers. The public has a right to know about financial relationships between those doctors and the drug companies who make the pharmaceuticals prescribed by doctors.
We sometimes think that the best doctors are the ones who have the most specialized knowledge or the fanciest degrees, but in fact, study upon study, including one published in the 'New England Journal of Medicine,' show that the best doctors are the ones who also know how to connect with their patients.
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.
I am concerned about the plight of the working poor... If doctors are not paid for seeing those patients, doctors will not go to rural Alabama because you can't expect a doctor to go to rural Alabama and lose money.
When we talked about going to help Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea Conakry how many doctors in Cuba raised their hands to go? 15 thousand. In their homes they said, "We are willing to go risk our lives to help other countries". That is true medicine; it is the true observance of the Hippocratic Oath that doctors swear to.
The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it's like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren't equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can't live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.
In the Swiss government there is a will to limit the number of doctors themselves, because with new bilateral agreements with the European Union, there is what we call the "free flow of persons"; that our borders are open to immigration. And as the Swiss doctors are better paid than others, we could have a huge increase of immigration of doctors, more than we need. So we decided to limit the numbers of doctors coming into Switzerland. It is not a very intelligent system, but it is the best one that we have found to limit immigration of doctors.
I think you've got good people and bad people in everything you do. If you start making a big deal of it, then it's a problem. It's like in life. We've got bad doctors and lawyers. We've got bad priests! We don't target every priest and say he's bad. You have to go to church and you have to go see some doctors. Some people have to be good.
Arnold Schwarzenegger said it best: "Your son is sick. Ninety-eight doctors give you one diagnosis, two doctors give you another. Who are you going to go with?" Well, why would it be the conservative position to go with the two? That's not conservative, that's crazy.
If the doctors cure
then the sun sees it.
If the doctors kill
then the earth hides it.
The doctors should fear arrogance
more than cardiac arrest.
Women go after doctors like men go after models. They want someone with knowledge of the body. We just want the body.
You know, in playing a role like this, you really want to get it right, because this is a person who was revered by so many doctors, women doctors especially.
It's hard for women to talk about these things, and for the doctors to really talk about it too, and to even have the knowledge of what's going on. That's why I'm doing this and urging women to speak out and talk to their doctors frankly.
I have two doctors, my left leg and my right. When body and mind are out of gear (and those twin parts of me live at such close quarters that the one always catches melancholy from the other) I know that I shall have only to call in my doctors and I shall be well again.
Good doctors exercise judgment. They make the call and - right or wrong - live with the consequences and learn from them. The redefined M.D. is flawed, but comfortable inside their own skin.