Quote

Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school - not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.

Abraham Verghese

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Abraham Verghese
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Third
Thirds
Students
Year
Clinical
School
Undergo
Years
Conversion
Cynical
Medical

More quotes by Abraham Verghese

Image
Being the first born gives you great patience.
Abraham Verghese
Image
We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients. And then by the end of the third year they completely lose that ability, partly because we teach them the specialized language of medicine.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Another day in paradise' was his inevitable pronouncement when he settled his head on his pillow. Now I understand what that meant: the uneventful day was a precious gift.
Abraham Verghese
Image
In an emergency, what treatment is given by ear? Words of Comfort.
Abraham Verghese
Image
We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds.
Abraham Verghese
Image
No matter what ailed you, you went to see the barber surgeon who wound up cupping you, bleeding you, purging you. And, oh yes, if you wanted, he would give you a haircut and pull your tooth while he was at it.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Patients know in a heartbeat if they're getting a clumsy exam.
Abraham Verghese
Image
The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.
Abraham Verghese
Image
My sense is that the wonderful technology that we have to visualize the inside of the body often leaves physicians feeling that the exam is a waste of time and so they may shortchange the ritual.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?
Abraham Verghese
Image
Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.
Abraham Verghese
Image
To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted
Abraham Verghese
Image
She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life at stake.
Abraham Verghese
Image
The only way to know where you are is by where you have just been.
Abraham Verghese
Image
I think we learn from medicine everywhere that it is, at its heart, a human endeavor, requiring good science but also a limitless curiosity and interest in your fellow human being, and that the physician-patient relationship is key all else follows from it.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Certainly when I got to medical school, I had role models of the kind of physicians I wanted to be. I had an uncle who, looking back, was probably not the most-educated physician around but he carried it off so well.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?... Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223... And pray, why would this number interest us? It is the only number that describes itself when you read it, 'One zero, two ones, three twos, two threes'.
Abraham Verghese
Image
We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.
Abraham Verghese
Image
He was teaching me how to die, just as he'd taught me how to live.
Abraham Verghese