Arriving At An Acceptance Of One's Mortality

Sometimes We Can Offer A Cure, Sometimes Only A Salve, Sometimes Not Even That. But Whatever We Can Offer, Our Interventions, And The Risks And Sacrifices They Entail, Are Justified Only If They Serve The Larger Aims Of A Person's Life. When We Forget That, The Suffering We Inflict Can Be Barbaric. When We Remember It The Good We Do Can Be Breathtaking.

We Now Have 30 Percent, For Example, Of Medicare Patients Who Are Seeing Doctors Who Are Rewarded For Doing This Kind Of Work, Like High Blood Pressure Control. So, The Affordable Care Act Has Pushed This Direction Down The Road.

Arriving At An Acceptance Of One's Mortality Is A Process, Not An Epiphany.

This Is The Reality Of Intensive Care: At Any Point, We Are As Apt To Harm As We Are To Heal.

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.