1. The process of globalization that dominates the beginning of the 21st century has created a context of global health interdependence in which many health threats transcend national boundaries, such as the spread of reemerging and new infectious diseases, increased microbial resistance to currently available drugs, and bioterrorism, and the challenges of financing the increasing demands of the public for better health.

21世纪初占主导地位的全球化进程已造成了一个全球卫生相互依赖的状况，许多对健康的威胁是超越国界的。例如，老的传染病重新兴起，新的传染病传播，细菌对现有药物的耐药性不断增加，生物恐怖主义，以及为满足公众日益增长的对更好保健需求方面的财源受到挑战。

2. Pressure to contain health care costs places physicians and other health care practitioners in difficult positions. If we pursue our patients’ best interests without regard to costs, we will accelerate health care inflation, a serious concern in an era in which governments throughout the industrialized world are struggling to offer care to their populations. 

But if we forsake patients' best interests in favor of society's pocketbook, we risk alienating our patients, who expect that we will be their untiring advocates.

控制卫生保健成本的压力使医生和其他卫生保健从业人员面临着困难的处境。如果我们为了病人的最大利益着想，而不去考虑成本，我们会加速卫生保健费用膨胀。现在，工业化国家的政府在为国民提供卫生保健竭力挣扎着。在这样一个时代里，卫生保健费用膨胀成了人们严重关切的问题。

但是，如果我们为了社会的财力问题而舍弃病人的最大利益，我们就冒有同病人疏远的风险，因为病人期待我们会不屈不挠地支持他们。

3. Although disagreements persist among experts about what aspects of medical practice are captured by the term "medical professionalism," wide agreement has nevertheless emerged in recent years within academic medicine that it is essential to try to teach the concept of professionalism to medical students and residents. 

尽管专家对于医学职业精神这个术语包含了行医实践的那些方面的分歧还会持续下去，但在近几年里医学界出现的广泛认同是，努力对医学生和住院医师教授职业精神概念是很重要的。

4. Despite a selection process that often passes over those who would make the best physicians, a training system that seems bent on wringing out the idealism and empathy with which most medical students start, and a medical establishment that far too often covers up for those who should not be practicing, the medical profession endures. 

Perhaps the profession owes its longevity to the pride and satisfaction its physicians realize from seeing the years of hard training and sacrifice make a crucial difference or even save a life.

尽管选拔过程常常忽视那些会成为最好医生的人，尽管培养体制似乎决意要把医学生一开始的理想和同情心榨干，尽管医疗机构常常掩盖那些不该行医的人，但医学职业仍然在继续着。

或许这一职业的长久，要归功于医生体会到的自豪和满足。这样的自豪和满足源自医生看到了多年的培训和牺牲起到关键甚至是救人一命的作用。

5. The moving stories I see every day of courage, love, and devotion, the memories I have of patients whose lives have touched mine and enriched me forever, keep me coming back to the endless fascination of the comedy and tragedy of the Shakespearean stage of life that is my ER—a drama in which among the leading players will always be the fallible human being who are physicians. 

我每天所见的动人故事富有勇气、充满爱心和奉献精神。病人的生活感动了我，丰富了我的人生。这一切记忆使我不断回到具有无穷魅力、莎士比亚式悲喜剧交加的人生舞台—我的急诊室。医生总是剧中的主要演员，他们也是会犯错误的人。

责任编辑：admin