Nov

28

Two Minute Drill IV

November 28, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Anesthesiology A poorly understood specialty, especially among surgeons who tend to look at the anesthesiologist in the same way airline pilots look at flight attendants. It certainly doesn’t look like much of a specialty. The anesthesiologist starts the lines, sedates the patient, intubates, turns on the gas and then reads his magazine or does crossword [...]

Nov

24

Dawn of the Dead

November 24, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Loaves and Fishes The body of Mr. Dubois recedes into the shadows as the nurse turns down the lights. His family wants some time with him before he is taken wherever it is we take the bodies of those who finally exhaust our ability to reanimate them. Mr. Dubois did not go quickly or easily. [...]

Nov

20

Hell on Earth

November 20, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Problem Based Learning Lecture is a pleasant, drowsy picnic where you nod in and out of sleep while listening to the far-away drone of bees and the faint ringing of goat-bells as the local peasant girls herd them to the high alpine pastures. Problem Based Learning is like being sodomized in prison by a big [...]

Nov

18

No Solution

November 18, 2006 | Leave a Comment

It Sucks to be You My post on my first day of third year seems to have struck a nerve and a few of you have asked some variation of the question, “What can we do to end the abuses which are so much a part of medical training?” The short answer is, “nothing.” As [...]

Nov

15

Mr. Smith Has an Epiphany

November 15, 2006 | Leave a Comment

I’ve got Your Back It’s my wife. The pager displays our super-secret marital code for “Everything is all right. I just want to see how you are doing. Call me at home.” “Hey baby,” I say when my lovely wife picks up, “How’s everything going?” “I’ll be home in another hour. Sorry. Things are kind [...]

Nov

14

Tomorrow Will Suck

November 14, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Third Year in a Nutshell I wasn’t really looking forward to patient contact. Because we spent all of first and second year far removed from the clinical practice of medicine I paid lip service to the idea that something was lacking in our medical education but to tell the truth, we had a pretty good [...]

Nov

10

Son of Random Madness

November 10, 2006 | Leave a Comment

I Hope This Doesn’t Catch On Vanilla extract tastes just like schnapps and has almost the same alcohol content, at least according to one of our frequent fliers who finally sobered up enough to tell me why he was shop-lifting the stuff. Not only that but because it’s not considered an alcoholic beverage nobody really [...]

Nov

5

Humility 101

November 5, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Are You a Real Doctor? They hand you your diploma and you are transformed from a medical student to a physician even though you don’t feel any different and you probably consider yourself to be something of an imposter. I know I did. For months after I graduated I had to suppress laughter whenever somebody [...]

Nov

3

Spectator Medicine

November 3, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Emergency Mrs. Jones looks like a cadaver. Her bony yellow legs stick out of the bottom of the gown. A pack of relatives clutch at each of her claw-like hands and stare confidently at the monitor over the bed. “She’s doing better, right?” Her blood pressure had been coming up steadily. A great-grandson reads the [...]

Nov

1

Dark Side II

November 1, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Tolerating the Intolerable (Just an addendum to the previous post in which we discussed Med School Hell, a subversive anti-medical school blog.) I am not advocating Brother Stox’s point of view, nor am I condemning it. It’s his point of view and he’s entitled to it. Since I’m not a mind-reader I’m not going to [...]