Notable, Quotable, and Tweetable

Listen:There’s a hell of a universe next door; let’s go.

e.e. cummings (1894-1962)

March 2, 2012 - Notable and Quotable: “Patient-centered medicine is, above all, a metaphor. “Patient-centered” contrasts with “doctor-centered” and replaces a Ptolemaic universe revolving around the physician with a Copernican galaxy revolving around the patient. The flaw in the metaphor is that the patient and the doctor must coexist in a therapeutic, social, and economic relation of mutual and highly interwoven prerogatives. Neither is the king, and neither is the sun. Health relies on collaboration between the patient and the doctor, with many others serving as interested third parties. Patient and physician must therefore meet as equals, bringing different knowledge, needs, concerns, and gravitational pull but neither claiming a position of centrality. A better metaphor might be a pair of binary stars orbiting a common center of gravity, or perhaps the double helix, whose two strands encircle each other, or — to return to medicine's roots — the caduceus, whose two serpents intertwine forever.”

Charles L. Bardes, MD, Weil Cornell Medical College, Defining “Patient-Centered Medicine”, New England Journal of Medicine, March 1, 2012

Comment: Now let me get this straight. Ptolemy has a universe. The patient has a universe. The doctor has a universe. All are in the same galaxy. Neither is the king, and neither is the sun. All are intertwined and interwoven like a caduceus, and all have a common center of gravity.

Tweet: Ptolemy has a universe. Patients and doctors have seperate universes but are interwoven like a cadcceous. That’s universe coverage – the wholistic enchilada.