To this day I have not found a happy hospital setting in twenty years of searching for one. For the health of the patient, the staff, and for the health of our profession, patients and staff must strive toward friendship in the deepest sense of the word. It is the unabashed projection of love, humour, empathy, tenderness, and compasion for that patient. If this science could keep everyone alive, healthy and vibrant forever, it could join the pantheon of subjective therapeutics, but even when it tries to, it fails miserably. Psychotropic medication and death bed heroics are just two glaring examples where science's outcome falls embarrassingly short of its goals.
Friendship is great medicine for the patient.
It overcomes all the inadequacies of the healing profession. In friendship is the potential for you to be yourself without fear of misunderstanding. The patient can feel the same way. There is no taboo subject and no withheld information. As a friend, you can be the imperfect doctor with the imperfect patient, so forgiveness is implied in all actions.