46 Quotes by Henry Marsh

Starting on time, with everything just right, and the surgical drapes placed in exactly the right way, the instruments tidily laid out, is an important way of calming surgical stage fright.

Life without hope is hopelessly difficult but at the end hope can so easily make fools of us all.

Psychological research has shown that the most reliable route to personal happiness is to make others happy. I have made many patients very happy with successful operations but there have been many terrible failures and most neurosurgeons’ lives are punctuated by periods of deep despair.

Surgeons must always tell the truth but rarely, if ever, deprive patients of all hope. It can be very difficult to find the balance between optimism and realism.

But I then thought of how the value of my work as a doctor is measured solely in the value of other people’s lives, and that included the people in front of me in the check-out queue.

We have been most successful, however, when our patients return to their homes and get on with their lives and never need to see us again. They are grateful, no doubt, but happy to put us and the horror of their illness behind them. Perhaps they never quite realized just how dangerous the operation had been and how lucky they were to have recovered so well. Whereas the surgeon, for a while, has known heaven, having come very close to hell.

Informed consent’ sounds so easy in principle – the surgeon explains the balance of risks and benefits, and the calm and rational patient decides what he or she wants – just like going to the supermarket and choosing from the vast array of toothbrushes on offer. The reality is very different.

It’s the professional shame that hurts the most,′ I said to him. I wheeled my bike as we walked along Fleet Street. ‘Vanity really. As a neurosurgeon you have to come to terms with ruining people’s lives and with making mistakes. But one still feels terrible about it and how much it will cost.

If patients were thinking rationally they would ask their surgeon how many operations he or she has performed of the sort for which their consent is being sought, but in my experience this scarcely ever happens.