#medical

The sort of thinking at the time was, 'Well, we're giving you access to medical care which you wouldn't otherwise be able to get, so your payment is that we get to use you in research.' ↗

— Rebecca Skloot

#access #care #get #giving #medical

Even doctors — or perhaps especially doctors — need to be touched by something personally to understand the suffering of others. We’ve been taught about the enormous power over life and death that is invested in us; we can be deluded into thinking we are almighty. Almost instinctively we view death, incurable disease and disability as challenging our power. We forget that this is all part of life. I guess that we have to defend ourselves against the human suffering that confronts us every day, otherwise we’d quickly go under. Medical jargon helps keep us remote, yet seeing colleagues suffer is hard. If we think too much, we realise that we – and our loved ones – are just as vulnerable as the rest of humanity. ↗

— Jane Wilson-Howarth

#medical-jargon #death

poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you ↗

— Walt Whitman

#civil-war #compassion #comrade #comradeship #death

One study concluded that there were 1.7 errors per patient per day in America's ICUs. Of these errors, 29 percent could have caused clinically significant harm or death. Given that the average ICU length of stay is three days, this research suggests that nearly all patients hospitalized in the ICU sustain a potentially life-threatening mistake at some point during their stay. ↗

— Peter Pronovost

#icu #iom #medical-errors #change