Quotes

The family physician should be the cornerstone, rather than gatekeeper, in health care. A medical practice should focus on understanding and meeting the needs of its patients, while at the same time educating patients about the nature of their health needs. This can be even more successful, rewarding, and fulfilling when done in the context of a community such as Celebration.

It doesn't matter how good your care is if patients can't get in to see you.  Justice delayed is justice denied, but good health care delayed is simply bad care.

While medical schools pejoratively refer to rural physicians, as LMDs (local medical doctors), they just don't grasp that those physicians know some things that they do not, and one of those is that know how to take care of a simple problem in a simple way.

The biggest problem that medicine faces is not a shortage of quality, it's an abundance of arrogance.

    One of the greatest barriers to effective patient care has always been "non-compliance", or the tendency of patients not to do as they are told, whether it be to take a prescription until it is finished, stop smoking, return for follow-up care, etc.  The frustration that physicians experience when patients "refuse" to follow their directions usually is expressed in a question/statement such as, "Well, how do you make patients do what you want?"  
    A comparable question once was posed to a famous elephant trainer.  When asked, "How do you make an elephant do tricks?", he simply replied, "An elephant weighs over 8,000 lbs.  You can't make him do anything, you convince him that he wants to."

At times, we may be fortunate enough to recognize in our lives something that William P. Leahy, S.J., referred to as "a kairos moment...a juncture in time when opportunities and challenges meet, and, if accepted, lead to new greatness and excellence."

If any man seeks greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.
                                                        -Horace Mann

While rural physicians are at a disadvantage in lacking firsthand exposure to new treatments, they seem to have developed a quality that many other physicians lack - they are able to treat simple problems in a simple way.