Alan M. de León’s Reviews > The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine > Status Update

“Just as all people are responsible for their larger community, so too are communities responsible for their people. If someone is suffering, and there is the capacity within the community to help, in a way that doesn’t harm anyone else, then we not only owe it to that person; we owe it to ourselves to help. I’m not really sure how to try to do my job without that belief.”

“That’s what healthcare is at its best, what I see at Ben Taub: science coming together with people. It’s why I continue to believe in medicine. My faith comes full circle when I imagine myself through each of their eyes and I realize I’m of of them.”

“Faith will always be a part of practicing medicine. Science explains the phenomena that allow us to treat patients effectively, but it can’t explain everything. What happens the moment a Code Blue ends will always be a mystery. Doctors will always have to believe in one possibility or another for which data can’t be collected.”

“Few places on earth evoke the conflict between the physical world and what exists beyond quite like the hospital bedside.”

“I told her I believed human beings had limits, even here at this bedside… The truth was that I believed in something, I just didn’t know what to call it… I believed in meaning and mystery, how, as much as we humans might have tried, we would never find answers to some of these larger-than-life questions (which I also believed was kind of great.) I believed in people.”

“‘People are scared to help an illegal because they think it’s illegal to help an illegal,’ she explained.”

“Patients and doctors, nurses and social workers - most people who’ve entered an emergency room or a doctor’s office know something is wrong with healthcare in America today. Instead of correcting the problem, however, we’ve all decided to accept the issues as permanent… But the costs remain unaffordable… We Americans are suffering collectively from disaster syndrome.”

“I’d rather practice in a system focused on people over profit. Whether or not the country is ready for such a shift requires us to explore the real price of unaffordable heathcare.”

“Algorithmania is the unexamined use of clinical roadmaps… the compulsion to force patients onto a step-by-step decision tree when complexities in the illness or person’s life ought to keep them off. An algorithmaniac puts the doctor’s desire to give a quick and uncomplicated answer above the patient’s need for help.”

“The patient-doctor relationship was so complex that it required connecting with people at multiple levels that went beyond science. People’s circumstances - like how a bus schedule might govern their lives - could make as much a difference in a therapy’s effectiveness as the therapy itself. Science didn’t easily allow for those considerations of context.”