No matter what measures are taken, doctors will sometimes falter, and it isn't reasonable to ask that we achieve perfection. What is reasonable is to ask that we never cease to aim for it.

No one teaches you how to think about money in medical school or residency. Yet, from the moment you start practicing, you must think about it. You must consider what is covered for a patient and what is not.

There are times when you have sharp elbows, and people are trying to muscle you out of certain meetings - because then people could leak to the press that you had a role in certain decisions. I, at twenty-six, was very impatient and didn't know how to keep my powder dry. I was running a team of seventy-five people when I had never been a boss. I was the worst boss ever.

We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still the way norms and standards change.

Our ideas of what our priorities are shift as we come face-to-face with some of the struggles.

Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance.

Once you start to ask patients about their priorities, you discover what they're living for. Once you uncover that, it helps you, as a doctor, decide what to fight for. And when we do that, we often end up identifying limits to the kind of care that people want. One's assumption is that these people are going to live shorter lives, but what we're doing is protecting quality of life. In doing so, you sometimes end up helping people live longer. Certainly, you help people live better days and with more purpose in their lives.