Thursday, September 11, 2008

you can't teach an old dog to teach.



I know there's been a really strong theme of complaining about my attending in the last week or so. That's because she totally deserves to be complained about. But I'll try and talk about other, more interesting things besides how dissatisfied I am once I've vented.
She doesn't teach any science to us. She doesn't teach us anything at all about medical decision making, physiology, or patient care. The only "words of wisdom" we ever get are about how we should doubt everything that our patients say because they're probably either lying to us, evading the police, or evading someone else on the outside (granted, this is sometimes true). When she does try and show off her science, she is not infrequently wrong--and about very basic things. She only teaches us the grammar of medicine (formatting our notes, dotting our t's and crossing our i's) rather than the practice of medicine (how to make decisions and cure people). It's so frustrating because I feel like I'm not even thinking at this point. She doesn't want us to try and come up with a plan for a patient--we are only to repeat what the team decided, without trying to make any decisions ourselves. ugh.

So on with the rest of my life... I did visit my psychiatrist, who told me that he'd heard a lot of complaints from students about my attending(!) and also agreed that it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to re-start anti-depressants. I'm starting to feel a little better about the world and my place in it. It probably helps that I discharged all but one patient, who is probably going home tomorrow or Saturday. Tomorrow I have to give a short talk on a medical topic of my choice. I'm thinking hyponatremia. It should be thrilling.

2 comments:

Shannon said...

yeah, but did you see the skirt I'm going to make you?

Lauren said...

um yeah but I want something less season-specific. can you do rodeo-themed?