Practice is funny that way. For days and days, you make out only the fragments of what to do. And then one day you've got the thing whole. Conscious learning becomes unconscious knowledge, and you cannot say precisely how.

The definition of what it means to be dying has changed radically. We are able to extend people's lives considerably, including sometimes, good days.

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.

Practice is funny that way. For days and days, you make out only the fragments of what to do. And then one day you've got the thing whole. Conscious learning becomes unconscious knowledge, and you cannot say precisely how.

I chose surgery because I thought that perhaps this would make me more like the kind of person I wanted to be.

This is the reality of intensive care: at any point, we are as apt to harm as we are to heal.

We recruit for attitude and train for skill.