For the past year, I, along with my faculty colleagues, have been cajoling, mentoring, prodding and bludgeoning gently guiding a new crop of senior students along the path from student to doctor. It is an arduous and bumpy road, with a few that inevitably fall off along the way.
There is an old, and not-so-nice adage – don’t get sick in June – that centers around this very topic. Last week I had seven seasoned and experienced interns as well as six senior students working with me on the ER service. The students had been through all of their rotations, knew where everything in the hospital was and what form to complete to get it. They were adept at moving the lumbering beast that is a teaching hospital into action.
Next week, I will have a new crop of students who might know where the hospital is, but not a lot beyond that. The month after that, my prized and much beloved interns will all spread to the four corners of the globe to either continue their education or start their careers in earnest. When they go, they will be replaced by seven new graduate doctors who will need to learn the ropes.
This cyclic progression of the noobs replacing the experienced happens every year, and always in June. Happens in human medicine, happens in veterinary medicine, and if they have medical school in Alpha Centauri, probably happens there, too. It is the only way we have found to keep the knowledge flowing, but it is sure far from perfect. The combination of inexperience with the medicine and lack of knowledge about how to get things done can be frustrating at a minimum, and, we must acknowledge, has the potential to be lethal in some cases.
We had a party for the interns at my house last Friday (all except the one who was left minding the shop). I live about 90 minutes from the hospital, and they all trekked down to our house for some relaxation, wine and BBQ after a hard year. They all earned it, too. I am very, very proud of this group. They have stuck together through thick and thin, and have grown to an amazing degree. A year ago when they started they had a head full of book knowledge, but not really any way to apply it. Hopefully now, through the insights they gained during their internship year, they know which bits of arcane knowledge might actually be used to save a life, and which ones are just so much fluff to be forgotten about at the first opportunity.
Somehow, over the course of the year, I started calling them ‘my tinies,’ and the image that became our avatar as a group was that of Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies – I pictured my self as the benevolent and slightly macabre dude holding the umbrella over their wee heads.
I started the year with my crop of interns trying to learn not only their faces and names, but also their strong points and where they needed targeted help. I ended the year in a hot tub with them, toasting all we had accomplished together. Not exactly part of the standard curriculum, but for me these guys will always have a special place as they were on point when we opened the ER at Purdue and suffered through a lot of logistical headaches.
The students, about 60 in all, will from here forward be able to be called ‘doctor’ after the ceremony this Saturday. It is a life-changing event, but only the start of the adventure for them. Some will find their niche in clinical practice, and treat animals happily for years. Some will get there and find it is not to their liking. Some will move into industry careers or research at some point, while others (very few, I hope) will change careers altogether.
I am proud, and immensely satisfied, to have taken part in their training. I hope that, from me, they not only learned a few facts than come in handy, but how to think like a doctor, and (more importantly) how to listen to the little voice inside that tells them what to do when seconds count.
I wish them all a satisfying journey, and may their skills save many lives over the years.
Photo credit: librarytypos.blogspot.com.
Editor’s note: For those unfamiliar with Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies, the entire poem and famous illustrations can be viewed here.
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