"The practice of medicine is rooted in a covenant of trust among patients, physicians, and society. The ethic of medicine must seek to balance the physician's responsibility to each patient and the professional, collective obligation to all who need medical care."
The Council of Medical Specialty Societies, 2000

Why call a patient  a "patient" and not a "client" or a "consumer"?

Patient is derived from the Latin word patiens, the present participle of the deponent verb pati, meaning "one who endures" or "one who suffers". Patient is also the adjective form of patience. Both senses of the word share a common origin.

In itself the definition of patient doesn't imply suffering or passivity but the role it describes is often associated with the definitions of the adjective form: "enduring trying circumstances with even temper".

Some have argued recently that the term should be dropped, because it underlines the inferior status of recipients of health care.[2] For them, "the active patient is a contradiction in terms, and it is the assumption underlying the passivity that is the most dangerous". Unfortunately the alternative terms also seem to raise objections:

Client, whose Latin root cliens means "one who is obliged to make supplications to a powerful figure for material assistance", carries a sense of subservience.

Consumer suggests both a financial relationship and a particular social/political stance, implying that health care services operate exactly like all other commercial markets. Many reject that term on the grounds that consumerism is an individualistic concept that fails to capture the particularity of health care systems.

...Extracted from Wikipedia

"Medicus Nihil Aliud Est Quam Animan Consollatio" A Latin Proverb translating to:
"A Doctor is nothing bu the constellation of the soul"

“Dedicate some of your life to others. Your dedication will not be a sacrifice. It will be an exhilarating experience because it is an intense effort applied toward a meaningful end.”  Dr. Thomas Dooley

"Are you willing to admit that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life but what you are going to put into it? To close your book of complaints against the management of the universe and to look around for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness?"

"Do you remember Dr Tom Dooley? He said he learned his formula for happiness the day a small boat pulled alongside his craft carrying his first close-up glimpse of SE Asia. On that boat were over 1000 refugees -- suffering from smallpox, terminal tuberculosis and diseases he couldn't even name. Many of the children on board were unconscious from the 115 degree heat. As the only doctor, Dooley attacked this great mountain of suffering with a feeling of hopelessness and despair. But before long, he said, a strange excitement began to grip him. A splint took the agony out of a broken arm, a boil could be lanced, some vitamins could help another. That day he learned he could be deeply, joyously happy. I've always appreciated his explanation for this happiness. He said he had learned a fundamental truth about himself: he was extra-sensitive to sorrow, and that when he did something about it, no matter how small, he couldn't help but be happy."

"Dr. Dooley held up in front of the camera a tiny, ill, starving child with a distended belly. Now, in the 1950s, such sights were never seen on television, or in magazines. It was shocking, and I recoiled emotionally. But then he calmly said, in essence,“When you look at this child you see something horrifying, but I look at this child and know that I have the knowledge and skill to make him well.”

-- Dr. Thomas Dooley, USN MD, 1954 - Supervised refugee camps to house fleeing N Vietnamise, l959 - Diagnosed, Cancer, Returned to Laos, 1961 - Died, age 34. From his final book, The Night They Burned the Mountain

Physicians must find and cultivate meaning in their work. MRB

To be a Physician and particularly to care for the critically or terminally ill patient is “a time for searching and yearning and painful emotions”     MRB

The Service of Medicine is not a relationship between an expert and  a problem.  It is a human relationship… a work of the heart and soul.”  Rachel Remen

“If medicine protects life then…literature interprets it.” W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter, Literature and Medicine During the 18th Century

There is “a need to learn how to teach the important empathetic art skills of medicine…,” Julie Parsonnet, M.D. Stanford University School of Medicine

“…It is no longer acceptable to know our own worth [ Nurses ] and not attempt to articulate what it is that we do, see, feel and provide to our patients, families, and communities.” Linda Pellico, Yale School of Nursing