Close communication among hospital staff members is crucial. Telephones, the paging system, and leaving of notes are all the poor substitute for face-to-face contact in an atmosphere of trust.
Awareness of patient expectations is important. Magical powers are frequently the stowed upon positions, diminishing the importance of the medical history in the physical examination. When asked for their chief complaint, patients at Lambarene frequently replied, "Ah, my doctor, you know already." They also attributed magical results to our surgery. Although less obvious, the same is true of patients in the United States today. Although the attribution of Godlike qualities including omnipotence and omissions or flattering and even tempting to believe, the day of reckoning come from magic will fail. All patients have some magical expectations; they are sometimes helpful. Frequently they need to be adjusted to reality.
At Lambarene, asians were not separated from their families in times of crisis. This was to everyone's benefit, patient, family, and staff. Patients are more comfortable and do better in accustomed surroundings.
Choice to believe that it is very difficult to practice charity toward another without destroying self-respect and the recipient. All patients should invest something, however meager, in their healthcare.
Reverence for life begets a basic respect for the patient that is the basis of all ethics and which is more important and motivating than any system of rules designed to safeguard patient dignity and rights.
The practice of medicine is easier and cheaper when one does not have to be defensive. It follows also that whatever energy is spent doing a necessary tasks is removed from application to genuine patient needs.
Any system that is devised for patient care should serve the needs of the patient and the staff. Organization for organizations sake is frustrating to all.
The work of volunteers was vital to Schweitzers work. They are not simply inexpensive help, but they are enthusiastic and regard hospital tasks as a privilege. They do not readily suffer burnout. They provide a different and fresh viewpoint through which unexpected answers or approaches often present themselves.
Patients will not buy into any system that they do not understand. If necessary, they will devise their own system of understanding.
In every culture and in every person is some concept of wholeness that has to be understood and appreciated if the patient is to be helped.
Diseases that seem to be diseases to an "outsider" are not necessarily diseases to those who have them and who may live comfortably with them. You cannot always judge another's needs by your own.
Teamwork in small groups that can see the entire picture encourages and understanding of continuous quality improvement that comes only with greater difficulty in any other way.
We must acquire the ability to look beyond external appearance is to see all patients as possessing the wonder of life, which is something we all share in common. Not to "love that I neighbor" is a dramatic form of schizophrenia or an unrealistic division of blind himself.