Quiet conversations

Quiet healing.

Both physicians and patients want deeply healing doctor-patient relationships. Too often, though, the ever-expanding demands of medical practice combine with the defenses of the patient to create doctor-patient isolation. Eastern and Western cosmologies and traditions may encourage different approaches to human interaction and healing. At times, probing the patient with more questions may open ...

Quiet caring.

D URING A WALK ABOUT THE ONCOLOGY unit where I was receiving antibiotics for pneumonia, I encountered an elderly woman, her arm splinted and wrapped by a sling and burdened by intravenous and oxygen tubing. She was slowly and painfully making her way to the family lounge with her nurse and daughter. I helped them into the room, and then we all sat down. I asked her about her arm. She told me th...

Quiet Lasers

Quiet bubbles

Classic speculative bubbles are loud – price is high and so are price volatility and share turnover. The credit bubble of 2003-2007 is quiet – price is high but price volatility and share turnover are low. We develop a model, based on investor disagreement and short-sales constraints, that explains why credit bubbles are quieter than equity ones. Since debt up-side payoffs are bounded, debt is ...

Quiet Lessons

Mrs Barnes is a chronically ill woman in her 50s who came to our intensive care unit after a bowel resection became complicated by infections. Her infections caused life-threatening dysfunction of multiple organ systems: she was on a ventilator, vasopressors, dialysis, and nutrition was administered through her vein. Every organ system that modern medicine can support artificially was being sup...