Inspirational Quotes

The Power of Music

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Submission by: Jorvic Ramos, OMS-III

“It’s fascinating and powerful to think that music, something that has been floating around in our environment forever – that this natural, omnipresent human activity has demonstrable benefit as treatment.”

Sarah Hoover., D.M.A., co-director of the Center for Music and Medicine

There is one universal language that unites us all – music.

Music is all around us. It’s not just the repetitive pop songs on the radio or your fine-tuned Spotify playlists that fit your every mood. Open your ears to the world around you – and you soon realize that music is everywhere.

The singing of the birds in the morning; the mechanical synchrony of your car starting up in the morning; the symphony of alarms, call lights, bed alarms, telephones, yelling of agitated patients during rounds; the calmness, wind, and quiet whirring of your bike’s pedals and chain during an afternoon ride; or the subtle humming of the fan as you study in the evening.

For me, making music is a way of creative expressiveness – something to keep my mind off medicine just for a little bit. However, you can’t deny the healing powers of music. Researchers have studied music interventions and the application of clinical music strategies in medicine. Music can balance the autonomic system by toning down sympathetic activity, allowing patients to relax; it can influence how the mind, body, and spirit interact with one other. Check out the videos below to see some examples how music can bring joy and better health to people.

95yo Julian Lee plays the piano
Henry’s transformation after listening to his favorite music
My quick cover of Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely on melodica and piano

For more on my musical endeavors, follow me on Instagram: @jorvicjustinmusic

Because All Things Come to an End

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Submission by: Jacky Ng, OMS III

Image accessed from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisgold/10766099293

“All things come to an end.”- Unknown

This is a quote that resonates throughout all aspects of life, and has made quite an impact on my own.

In hard times, knowing this saying reassures me that suffering isn’t forever.

In good times, knowing this saying encourages me to really enjoy and the relish the moment.

What quotes or sayings help you keep going in the face of adversity?

Celebrating the Little Victories

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Submission by: Neehar Gaddam – OMS III

Image accessed from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/cards/28612302532

When observing masters of any craft, you notice that they do not waste any motion. Every movement is quick and precise. They often spend years improving their techniques, down to perfecting the last detail.

They realize that the road from average to master is paved with details. Step here. Cut here. Carve here. Heat for 12 minutes, not 10.

What this reminds me as a medical student is that, details matter. Small improvements, matter.

Over time, they can even snowball into big changes. As such, they deserve to be celebrated. This holds true for us as well as for our patients. Progress is progress. Incidentally, a major source of burnout is a feeling of inefficacy.

You are just not making the difference you thought you would.

As Andy Warhol put it,

“You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.”

This quote reminds me that even minor changes deserve to be reveled in. Even small improvements are steps forward.

So stop, take a moment to celebrate the minor victories with your patients, appreciate what went into achieving that progress, and then keep moving forward, as a true master does.

Literature to Revive Empathy

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Submission by: Kwabena Adubofour, MD

Back in a 2009 interview this is what Journalist Susan Cohen wrote about Abraham Verghese, MD, MACP :

“Verghese believes in the curative power of literature for physicians. Writing is a way to explore what they see every day and can’t share. Reading is a way for students to revive the empathy that gets lost in the process of medical training”.

Abraham Verghese, MD, MACP

https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/abraham-verghese


We at daily dose of humanities fully agree with this view.

Abraham Verghese, MD. MACP is the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor in the Department of Medicine at Stanford.


Here are some relevant quotes from his published works and interviews.

1) I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient; it’s only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.

2) I think we learn from medicine everywhere that it is, at its heart, a human endeavor, requiring good science but also a limitless curiosity and interest in your fellow human being, and that the physician-patient relationship is key; all else follows from it.

3) What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it. The process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialized language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve; empathy can be replaced by cynicism.

4) Tell us please, what treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?”

….I met his gaze and I did not blink.

“Words of comfort,” I said to my father

5) Patients know in a heartbeat if they’re getting a clumsy exam.

6) When I use the word ‘healing’, by that I mean that every disease has a physical element that we’re very good at handling, but there’s always a sense of the violation. ‘Why me?’ ‘Why is my leg broken on the ski trip and not anyone else’s?’ And I think that medicine has done a terrible job of addressing that spiritual violation.

7) Literature is a beautiful way of keeping the imagination alive, of visiting worlds you would never have time to in your day-to-day life. It keeps you abreast of a wider spectrum of human activities.

Vocation

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Submission by: Kwabena Adubofour, MD

IT COMES FROM the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a man is called to by God.

There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Super-ego, or Self-Interest.

By and large a good rule for finding out is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you’re bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren’t helping your patients much either.

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do.

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

Originally published in Wishful Thinking
BY FREDERICK BUECHNER

Ten Commandments of Physician Wellness

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Submisison by: Kwabena Adubofour, MD
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4453302/

From Edward J. Krall, MD: “There is a lot of press about the stress of practicing medicine, but less about the secrets of thriving. There is literature about resilience. It has limitations, but several themes have emerged. Pulling together ideas from that literature and experience from my work with colleagues, I offer to residents these “Ten Commandments of Physician Wellness.”

1. Thou shall not expect someone else to reduce your stress.
2. Thou shall not resist change.
3. Thou shall not take thyself in vain.
4. Remember what is holy to thee.
5. Honor thy limits.
6. Thou shall not work alone.
7. Thou shall not kill or take it out on others.
8. Thou shall not work harder. Thou shall work smarter.
9. Seek to find joy and mastery in thy work.
10. Thou shall continue to learn.

Osler’s Corner

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Submission by: Kwabena Adubofour, MD

“The young doctor should look about early for an avocation, a pastime, that will take him away from patients, pills, and potions…”

William Osler BMJ 1909;2:925-928.

“Like song that sweetens toil, laughter brightens the road of life, and to be born with the sense of comic is a precious heritage”.

William Osler ‘Two Frenchman on Laughter‘, CMAJ 1912(II):152

“Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day’s work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition”.

William Osler. Aequanimitas ‘After 25 years.’ 1914:213

“There is a form of laughter that springs from the heart, heard every day in the merry voice of childhood, the expression of a laughter — loving spirit that defies analysis by the philosopher, which has nothing rigid or mechanical in it, and totally without social significance. Bubbling spontaneously from the heart of child or man. Without egotism and full of feeling, laughter is the music of life”.

William Osler. Two Frenchmen on laughter. Men and Books. CMAJ 1912;(II):152

“Things cannot always go your way. Learn to accept in silence the minor aggravations, cultivate the gift of taciturnity and consume your own smoke with an extra draught of hard work, so that those about you may not be annoyed with the dust and soot of your complaint”.

William Osler. Aequanimitas ‘The Master-word in medicine.’ 1914:385

“To serve the art of medicine as it should be served, one must love his fellow man”.

William Osler. Modern medicine, its theory and practice. 1907;(1):34

“Keep a looking glass in your own heart, and the more carefully you scan your own frailties, the more tender you are for those of your fellow creatures”.

Homan E quoting Sir William Osler:Teacher and bibliophile. JAMA 1969;210:2223-5