A patient is any recipient of health care services. The patient is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician, physician assistant, advanced practice registered nurse, veterinarian, or other health care provider.
The word patient originally meant 'one who suffers'. This English noun comes from the Latin word patiens, the present participle of the deponent verb, patior, meaning 'I am suffering,' and akin to the Greek verb πάσχειν (= paskhein, to suffer) and its cognate noun πάθος (= pathos).
Read more about Patient: Outpatients and Inpatients, Alternative Terminology, Patient Satisfaction
Famous quotes containing the word patient:
“I am like a doctor. I have written a prescription to help the patient. If the patient doesn’t want all the pills I’ve recommended that’s up to him. But I must warn that next time I will have to come as a surgeon with a knife.”
—Javier Pérez De Cuéllar (b. 1920)
“The years seemed to stretch before her like the land: spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning; the same pulling at the chain—until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“By rights, satire is a lonely and introspective occupation, for nobody can describe a fool to the life without much patient self-inspection.”
—Frank Moore Colby (1865–1925)