Our Ideas Of What Our Priorities Are

Human Interaction Is The Key Force In Overcoming Resistance And Speeding Change.

I Chose Surgery Because I Thought That Perhaps This Would Make Me More Like The Kind Of Person I Wanted To Be.

The Possibilities And Probabilities Are All We Have To Work With In Medicine, Though. What We Are Drawn To In This Imperfect Science, What We In Fact Covet In Our Way, Is The Alterable Moment-the Fragile But Crystalline Opportunity For One's Know-how, Ability, Or Just Gut Instinct To Change The Course Of Another's Life For The Better.

One Of The Reasons People Might Be Fallible, Why We Might Fail To Do What We Try To Do Isignorance, That We Have A Limited Understanding Of The Laws Of The World - The Physical Laws That Govern The World And Of All The Particulars Of The World Upon Which Those Laws Work. And Then There's Ineptitude, Meaning That The Knowledge Is Available, But Individuals Fail To Apply It Correctly. The Third Source Is "necessary Fallibility." That Is, We're Never Going To Be Omniscient, There Is Some Knowledge That We Will Simply Never Achieve, And There Are Limits To What We Will Be Able To Do.

When We, Doctors, Ask Patients What Their Priorities Are If Time Is Short, What We Do Is We Use What Is Available To Us - Whether It's Geriatric Care Or Palliative Care Or Hospice Care - To Make Sure They're Living The Kind Of Life That They Want To Live.