Doctored Quotes

“Success is judged not by the position you reach in life but by the obstacles you have overcome.”
― Sandeep Jauhar, Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician

“I witnessed so much death and dying that first year, it was sometimes hard to take. Every death challenged me to clarify my value system. How much should I defer to a patient’s wishes regarding end-of-life care? How hard should I encourage him, as I had James Irey, to make what I thought were the right choices? How to balance a patient’s autonomy with the competing ethical imperatives of beneficence or social responsibility?”
― Sandeep Jauhar, Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician

“Callahan got up and wrote “extend life < prevent suffering” on a white board. Underneath he wrote: “Goals: hasten death (no); prevent suffering (yes).” Turning to me, he said that it was ethically justifiable to start a drug like morphine that could speed up death, as long as preventing suffering was the primary intention and hastening death was an inescapable side effect. This doctrine of “double effect” says that actions in the pursuit of a good end (symptom relief) are morally acceptable even if they result in a negative outcome (death), as long as the negative outcome is unintended and the good outcome is not a direct consequence of the negative one.”
― Sandeep Jauhar, Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician

“You can speed up after an accident, but you never make up for lost time.”
― Sandeep Jauhar, Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician

“Perhaps this is the solution to medicine’s midlife crisis, too: doctors focusing on their noble craft, their relationships with patients, the stuff over which we have some control. Ultimately, this may be the best hope for our professional salvation.”
― Sandeep Jauhar, Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician

“Technology cannot change whether you are going to die, only the mode of your demise.”
― Sandeep Jauhar, Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician

“Many professions, including law and teaching, have become constrained by corporate structures, resulting in loss of autonomy, status, and respect.”
― Sandeep Jauhar, Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician

“we thought it was worthwhile and noble, but from what I have seen in my short career, it is a charade.”
― Sandeep Jauhar, Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician

“Wholly unprepared,… we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve as before. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning—for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. —Carl Jung”
― Sandeep Jauhar, Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician

“One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection. —Bertrand Russell”
― Sandeep Jauhar, Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician

“Apart from the perverse incentives of our fee-for-service system, a major driver of overconsultation is the uncertainty engendered by the hurried pace of contemporary medicine.”
― Sandeep Jauhar, Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician