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Patients know in a heartbeat if they're getting a clumsy exam.

Abraham Verghese

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Abraham Verghese
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Exam
Clumsy
Patients
Heartbeat
Patient
Getting

More quotes by Abraham Verghese

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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
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That's the funny thing about America--the blessed thing. As many people as there are to hold you back, there are angels whose humanity makes up for all the others. I've had my share of angels.
Abraham Verghese
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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
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He was teaching me how to die, just as he'd taught me how to live.
Abraham Verghese
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She had always assumed that she would have years to sort out the meaning of life... As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.
Abraham Verghese
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To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.
Abraham Verghese
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My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.
Abraham Verghese
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I think America is really in denial about the degree to which residents, particularly foreign medical graduates, man the county hospitals of this country, and but for their services, I'm not sure how exactly we could manage.
Abraham Verghese
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Being the first born gives you great patience.
Abraham Verghese
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Life for the Italians was what it was, no more and no less, an interlude between meals
Abraham Verghese
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I'm a great believer in geography being destiny.
Abraham Verghese
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We're losing a ritual. We're losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.
Abraham Verghese
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No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.
Abraham Verghese
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When I wake to the gift of yet another sunrise my first thought is to rouse him and say, I owe you the sight of morning.
Abraham Verghese
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What treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?
Abraham Verghese
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Yesterday misspent can't be recall'd Vanity makes beauty contemptible Wisdom is more valuable than riches.
Abraham Verghese
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The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.
Abraham Verghese
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...guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.
Abraham Verghese
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The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.
Abraham Verghese
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You are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can can play the 'Gloria'? No, not Bach's 'Gloria.' Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.
Abraham Verghese