I reflected later that without calling it such, Maurice and I had participated in the relatively new model of shared decision-making in which patient preferences are taken as much into account as doctors’ recommendations.

In the past few decades, many patients and physicians have come to the conclusion that evidence-based treatments by specialists (and sub- and sub-subspecialists) don’t necessarily supply what people need to heal. Physicians and nurses now routinely team up with mental-health professionals, alternative practitioners, social workers, and chaplains to

On survey after survey they reported that reading and discussing works of literature had made them feel less stressed, more connected to their patients and to one another.

The commodities I struggle to ration are my own time and energy.

how reading increases empathy, decreases burnout, or even makes you a nicer person. These may be true, but for me, reading—now that I am truly a reader—has a more profound effect: it effaces the boundaries between me and my colleagues, between me and my patients, and also between me and my many selves. When I’m doing it right, reading makes me feel

“How focused we become in our little areas, and how easy it is to lose sight of the daily fears and concerns of our patients,”

other categories of hateful patients Groves identified are “clingers” and “self-destructive deniers.”

Rachel Naomi Remen, who once observed,

It wasn’t exactly what either of us wanted, but it was a plan both of us could live with. Like healthy trees facing a strong wind, we’d each bent a little. We’d each complied.