# EMS/medical quotes



## Brandon O (Feb 12, 2014)

Anybody else a quote fan? I like to collect 'em. Nothing's wiser than pithiness and it's a nice way to remember why we're doing the whole medicine thingamajig.

Share 'em if you've got 'em! Here's a few...


May I never see in the patient anything but a fellow creature in pain.

-- Oath of Maimonides


‎I usually try to imagine what a regular person would do, someone more in tune with the supplies and demands of human nature, and once I realize a regular person would never find himself in this position, I try to think like a hero in the movies.

-- Bringing Out the Dead


I make my patients feel like they’re still part of life, part of some grand nutty scheme instead of alone with their diseases. With me, they still feel part of the human race.

-- _The House of God_, Sam Shem


Once, when I mentioned this to second-year medical students, one raised his hand, "We learned empathy already." What? "Yes, last year in interviewing. Empathy is when you repeat the last three words the patient says and nod your head."

-- Sam Shem, Harvard 2009 commencement speech


'Kindness' covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

-- Roger Ebert


It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.

-- Hippocrates


At times, in medicine, you feel you are inside a colossal and impossibly complex machine whose gears will turn for you only according to their own arbitrary rhythm. The notion that human caring, the effort to do better for people, might make a difference can seem hopelessly naive. But it isn't.

-- _Better_, Atul Gawande


The modest merits of this good citizen may, so far as the public are concerned, be summed up in the simple statement that he has saved upwards of 30 lives from drowning. When we consider what are the awards usually apportioned by mankind to the destroyers of their species, the presentation of a gold watch and chain, accompanied by a framed parchment from the Royal Humane Society, in the precincts of a disused School Room, must appear an inadequate acknowledgment of services so signal. But we are new at the business and shall improve as we go forward . . .

There is a hackneyed platitude to the effect that virtue is its own reward, but it is safe to say that the average man does not find such a result sufficient. It might be so in an ideal world inhabited by ideal people, but in this work-a-day world, in addition to the approval of our conscience, we love to have the approval of our fellows and to know that our  acts are appreciated, and especially is this  the case when we are actuated by altruistic motives. This is, of course, a form of vanity, but then vanity is almost a universal failing. 

-- _Life of Harry Watts; sixty years sailor & diver_, Alfred Spencer


Tracey: When you can't run, you crawl. And when you can't crawl, you... when you can't do that...

Zoe: You find someone to carry you.

-- Firefly, "The Message" (e12)


She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life at stake.

-- _Cutting for Stone_, Abraham Verghese


You should bother, because EMTs are privileged to play in life's great game. Too many unlucky people watch the action thunder by, stuck at a desk, or watching it on television at home.

-- Kelly Grayson


The most basic job of an EMT is to notice things and then wonder about them

-- Thom ****


. . . until the curtain was rung down on the last act of the drama (and it might have no last act!) he wished the intellectual cripples and the moral hunchbacks not to be jeered at; perhaps they might turn out to be the heroes of the play.

-- George Santayana on William James (quoted in Linda Simon's _William James Remembered_)


I don't do this STUPID JOB because I want to be LIKED or ACCEPTED or whatever --

although that WOULD be [effing] NICE --

I do this STUPID JOB because I'm DRIVEN to do it -- 

unlike YOU, I do this stupid, STUPID job because

BECAUSE THIS  IS  WHAT  I  AM

-- _Empowered_, issue 4


You've always perched yourself at a slight angle to the universe.

-- _The House of God_, Sam Shem


I don’t like hurting people. Is that so hard to understand? When I go to bed at night, I can sleep easily, knowing that I fought for freedom, and for less suffering rather than more. That I stood by someone accused so that he would not have to stand alone.

I can’t know whether anyone is truly guilty or innocent, or what they deserve, and frankly, I don’t care. We all deserve at least one person on the damn planet willing to stand there next to us and fight on our behalf.

-- Danielle E. Sucher


I love you and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

-- Scrubs, "My Words of Wisdom" (s06E16)


It was a common practice to light a bonfire close to any shipwreck that could not be rescued immediately. This was done to let the surfmen have enough light to see the shipwreck, help keep the watching surfman warm, and let the survivors of the shipwreck know that they had not been abandoned.

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_James_(lifesaver)


It seemed a marvel to her that any mortal should suffer for lack of love, and yet she had never known a mortal who didn't feel unloved. There was enough love just in this ugly hallway, she thought, that no one should ever feel the lack of it again. She peered at the parents, imagining their hearts like machines, manufacturing surfeit upon surfeit of love for their children, and then wondered how something could be so awesome and so utterly powerless.

-- Chris Adrian, "A Tiny Feast," (_The New Yorker_ April 20, 2009)


----------



## mycrofft (Feb 12, 2014)

"Patient's Lie".

Character of Gregory House, MD, played by Hugh Laurie (no idea of the originating author).


----------



## RebelAngel (Feb 14, 2014)

We I feel a little overwhelmed with the amount of things I am suppose to learn or when flub up on something in my course this keeps me going.


----------



## mycrofft (Feb 14, 2014)

While it does not actually appear in the Hippocratic Oath, the concept is paramount:

*"Do no harm".*

(Put your ego back in the bag, do what you know and know what you do, and don't get sucked into doing edgy stuff because of the stress to "do something"). 

If this isn't a quote, make it so:

"The most important and hardest thing to learn is to know when to stop, what not to do, and when to get help".


----------



## SandpitMedic (Feb 14, 2014)

Yeah, do know harm. Like the man said.

 kinda.


----------



## unleashedfury (Feb 19, 2014)

Somewhere out there is a tree tirelessly producing oxygen for you to breathe. I think you owe it a apology - Gregory House MD>


----------



## Av8or007 (Feb 20, 2014)

"All substances are poisons, and none is without poison. It is the dose that differentiates a poison from a remedy."

-parcelsius


----------



## UnkiEMT (Feb 20, 2014)

For funny and yet still words to live by, the first thing to leap to my mind was Mycrofft's first answer, for actual, no s**t inspiration, the IFRC humanitarian mandate:

To prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found.


----------



## Brandon O (Feb 20, 2014)

UnkiEMT said:


> To prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found.



I like that.


----------



## Brandon O (Mar 14, 2014)

Given the fallibility of inference, the interviewer is well advised to stick closely to observations and be able to cite them. This skill requires training. The beginner may be overly impressed by brilliant intuitive leaps; the expert heeds intuition but realizes how unreliable it is. The beginner grasps for, and holds firmly to, an inference, sometimes in spite of contrary evidence. The expert makes the inference, cites the clues on which it is based, can offer alternative explanations, and discards the inference for a better one if contrary evidence emerges.

-- Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment: Psychiatry (second edition), Patient Interview


----------



## mycrofft (Mar 14, 2014)

UnkiEMT said:


> For funny and yet still words to live by, the first thing to leap to my mind was Mycrofft's first answer, for actual, no s**t inspiration, the IFRC humanitarian mandate:
> 
> To prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found.



and boldly go where no man has gone before…
oops sorry


----------



## FiremanMike (Mar 14, 2014)

If you want me to take you to the emergency room for your flu, you're going to stand up and walk over there to my truck, sit in that bench seat, and don't touch anything.

-firemanmike


----------



## mycrofft (Mar 14, 2014)

Brandon O said:


> Given the fallibility of inference, the interviewer is well advised to stick closely to observations and be able to cite them. This skill requires training. The beginner may be overly impressed by brilliant intuitive leaps; the expert heeds intuition but realizes how unreliable it is. The beginner grasps for, and holds firmly to, an inference, sometimes in spite of contrary evidence. The expert makes the inference, cites the clues on which it is based, can offer alternative explanations, and discards the inference for a better one if contrary evidence emerges.
> 
> -- Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment: Psychiatry (second edition), Patient Interview



And people wonder that the inspiration for Sherlock Homes was a physician, and written by one! 

If you like Holmes, try Dr Thorndyke stories by R. AUstin Freeman, contemporary but much more scientific and sarcastic.


----------



## mycrofft (Mar 14, 2014)

More of Mycrofft's Gems to Trainees Over The Years blagh blagh blagh…

"There is no such thing as a 2X2. It's a 4X4 or it's a waste of room".

" The triangular bandage, AKA the cravat, is your FRIEND!".

"Ace bandages in the hands of laypersons are dangerous, and their spiky clips are a danger to everyone".

And finally:

"Handheld suction SUCKS!".


----------



## Brandon O (Mar 14, 2014)

mycrofft said:


> And people wonder that the inspiration for Sherlock Homes was a physician, and written by one!
> 
> If you like Holmes, try Dr Thorndyke stories by R. AUstin Freeman, contemporary but much more scientific and sarcastic.



Holmes (and the good doctor, Arthur Conan Doyle) is a splendid example of medical reasoning. Although in a more modern context, I do like House.


----------



## Household6 (Mar 15, 2014)

I've really learned this one over the last 6 months.


----------



## mycrofft (Mar 15, 2014)

Household6 said:


> I've really learned this one over the last 6 months.



Hope your revelation has been second hand.


----------



## mycrofft (Mar 15, 2014)

Brandon O said:


> Holmes (and the good doctor, Arthur Conan Doyle) is a splendid example of medical reasoning. Although in a more modern context, I do like House.



House was like a rich kid stumbling drunk in a Porsche showroom and trying and wrecking one car after another. But he always could fall back on his two friends, paraneoplastic syndrome, and autoimmune syndrome.

But great quotes!

"Occam's Razor.  The simplest explanation is almost always somebody screwed up."

"The eyes can mislead, the smile can lie, but the shoes always tell the truth."

"Mistakes are as serious as the results they cause!"

AND (drumroll):

"Saying there appears to be some clotting is like saying there's a traffic jam ahead. Is it a ten-car pile up, or just a really slow bus in the center lane? And if it is a bus, is that bus thrombotic or embolic? I think I pushed the metaphor too far."


Thanks to the "House, MD Website" at:

http://www.housemd-guide.com/characters/houserules.php


----------



## Brandon O (Mar 15, 2014)

There's a fair amount of nonsense and leeway watching House, of course. (This guy does -- did -- medical reviews on all the episodes, so it's nicely catalogued there.) But it's still a fun exercise to play diagnostician as you watch. Serious students can write down symptoms and keep a differential as they go, and maybe pause the episode to update the ddx as things present. It's a nice way to practice corralling together disparate findings on the fly and drawing physiological connections (i.e. not just falling back on simple memorized associations like "rales = CHF," but thinking about the pathophys and integrating systems together).

But yeah, obviously, the most common ways to connect weird and remote pathologies are often things like autoimmune problems, or infection. (It's a great ID review.) There's definitely some good ones with genetic conditions or iatrogenic effects too.


----------



## Household6 (Mar 15, 2014)

mycrofft said:


> Hope your revelation has been second hand.



Unfortunately, no.. Humanity disappoints me sometimes. Not sure if it's laziness, ignorance, or fear.. Probably all three.


----------



## mycrofft (Mar 15, 2014)

Sorry.:unsure:


----------



## mycrofft (Mar 15, 2014)

Brandon O said:


> There's a fair amount of nonsense and leeway watching House, of course. (This guy does -- did -- medical reviews on all the episodes, so it's nicely catalogued there.) But it's still a fun exercise to play diagnostician as you watch. Serious students can write down symptoms and keep a differential as they go, and maybe pause the episode to update the ddx as things present. It's a nice way to practice corralling together disparate findings on the fly and drawing physiological connections (i.e. not just falling back on simple memorized associations like "rales = CHF," but thinking about the pathophys and integrating systems together).
> 
> But yeah, obviously, the most common ways to connect weird and remote pathologies are often things like autoimmune problems, or infection. (It's a great ID review.) There's definitely some good ones with genetic conditions or iatrogenic effects too.



To stray further off topic, one episode of HOUSE contained two anecdotes from a book I once read ; a man who ate so many carrots he turned orange, and a kid poisoned with organophosphates spilled onto his jeans before his mom bought them at a discount store.


----------



## mycrofft (Mar 15, 2014)

One of my two EMT instructors at MetroTech Community College (Lance and Ernie):

"Don't get on the radio to me talkin' about a 'possible distal fracture of the  tibia this and that'. A broke leg is a broke leg and it needs a splint."


----------



## Meursault (Mar 15, 2014)

Forum OC!


Veneficus said:


> When people refer to me as a healer, I feel compelled to correct them. I would describe my role as more of a necromancer. I can prolong your life, maybe even take away some of your pain, but I cannot make you the way you were and you will pay a price beyond money for what I offer. Whether or not you can accept that is up to you.


----------



## mycrofft (Mar 16, 2014)

Bring back Vene!


----------



## TheLocalMedic (Mar 16, 2014)

"Never put bare fingers where you wouldn't put your face."


----------



## UnkiEMT (Mar 16, 2014)

TheLocalMedic said:


> "Never put bare fingers where you wouldn't put your face."



In a similar vein, something my basic (and intermediate) instructor said, "Never put anything in a pt's mouth you're not willing to lose."


----------



## mycrofft (Mar 16, 2014)

UnkiEMT said:


> In a similar vein, something my basic (and intermediate) instructor said, "Never put anything in a pt's mouth you're not willing to lose."



And wouldn't mind the pt swallowing or inhaling.

Man, I need to remember that for my class! Dibs!


----------



## UnkiEMT (Mar 16, 2014)

mycrofft said:


> And wouldn't mind the pt swallowing or inhaling.
> 
> Man, I need to remember that for my class! Dibs!



Well considering I did my basic and intermediate in Maine, I don't think there's much chance of her finding out you stole it.


----------



## mycrofft (Mar 17, 2014)

Probably on here already.
I'll wear a fake beard and moustache


----------



## Brandon O (Apr 7, 2014)

"There's no cure for dying."

-- House, "One Day, One Room" (s03e12)


----------



## mycrofft (Apr 7, 2014)

Brandon O said:


> "There's no cure for dying."
> 
> -- House, "One Day, One Room" (s03e12)



One of the best episodes, even if he grabs a needled syringe of paralytic out of a drawer to stop a seizure caused by Valium (!!???).


----------



## Brandon O (Apr 7, 2014)

mycrofft said:


> One of the best episodes, even if he grabs a needled syringe of paralytic out of a drawer to stop a seizure caused by Valium (!!???).



To shut up a combative patient, rather. Someone else OD's on Valium.

No finger-pointing, but I have heard tell of ED docs using sux as their "chemical restraint" back in the good/bad old days...


----------



## mycrofft (Apr 14, 2014)

And it is kept in preloaded typical syringes in drawers.

That actress was a licensed bodyguard and martial arts practitioner. I liked her as the reporter/girlfriend of Booth on BONES.


----------



## Brandon O (Apr 14, 2014)

mycrofft said:


> And it is kept in preloaded typical syringes in drawers.



For close encounters


----------



## Chupathangy (Apr 27, 2014)

Brandon O said:


> Tracey: When you can't run, you crawl. And when you can't crawl, you... when you can't do that...
> 
> Zoe: You find someone to carry you.
> 
> -- Firefly, "The Message" (e12)


Thanks for including that one. Great episode.


----------



## EMedCounsel (Apr 27, 2014)

“We are the last stop for Mrs. Smith when her 
kitchen is burning. There ain’t no 9-1-2.” 
-Chief Alan Brunacini, Phoenix Fire Dept. 

This is a fire-based quote I like, but the underlying theme and idea are easily transferable to the medical side.


----------



## mycrofft (Apr 27, 2014)

"Never mess with hands, eyes, babies or pregnancies. You're always going to lose. Send 'em out". (MD I was working with at the jail).
------------
"The abdomen is a dark, dangerous and mysterious place". (anatomy instructor).
--------------

(In Booking)
"Do you drink alcohol?"
"No just beer".
"How much in an average day?".
"About six forties. But sometimes I share".
"If you quit, do you have bad dreams, start shaking, get sick to your stomach…"
"Whaada ya mean, 'quit'!".


----------

