medical school

Yeah! This is the good stuff imo.

To be honest I like learning about most medical stuff I just don't think I'd have the discipline to acutally, you know, go to medical school.

It is easier to learn stuff in excruciating detail when it is really really interesting, and most of what you have to learn in medical school is really really interesting. (Not all of it, and that stuff...that can get pretty brutal). And once you get to 3rd year then you are learning based on actual patients, and that is by all accounts 100x more interesting.

wow i want to be an ER doctor!

why am i still reading this thread ;_;

yeah, i'm back to wanting to be an ER doc (which was the plan when i came in)

I think that would be so interesting. DO IT.

I had the most badass prof for anat & phys, old retired guy who taught with his wife & who had been an ER doc in Detroit. Every couple weeks he'd give us some body horror slideshows (w/proper slides, fuck a .ppt) of photos from the Detroit ER. Most memorable was photo of a dude w/a giant hydrocele (meaning his nutsack was a big ole water balloon), nuts almost down to his knees.

He'd grown up in Bolivia, so he had great photos from there too (just of regular things, like llamas to illustrate how oxygen works at different elevations, not crazy people who'd stabbed themselves on PCP). He told us that when he went to medical school there, the instructor was doing a lecture on tonsillectomies, and asked if anyone needed their tonsils out. My prof said he did, so in front of the whole class, he had his tonsils out without anaesthesia. *_*

@_@

He had a hard time saying American-style 'R's, so whenever he had to talk about iron he'd sigh and say, "Irrrr-on, you know, EFF EE."

Bottles up the butt is an old, old story: friend's late dad who served in WWII hospitals in London loved telling us how careful a doc had to be removing them because creating a vacuum back there was not the best idea. Actually I think he just liked attention from grossed-out teenaged girls: 'EW EW EW...no, really? How did that come out? EWWWWWW don't! No!'

omg did not consider the vaccuum

What does that result in? I mean, why is it a problem? (Yes, I R RETARD.)

I'm not a doctor but I think the gist of it is EWWWWW PROLAPSED GUTS or an arse like the Mouth of Cthulhu.

Oh I can sort of imagine it, but I NEED A CLEAR IMAGE. heh

NO! Please do yourself a favor and don't GIS prolapsed rectum. I'm not generally squeamish at all and I think I may vom.

LOL kinda love the idea of gbx getting beyond-the-grave advice from one of the best surgeons ever to walk the halls of his med school.

why would anyone GIS prolapse ~anything???

I was curious!!

To be honest that isn't even the worst medical and/or health related thing I've GISd.

anyone GIS prolapse

Uh oh. I read the description and, no thank you, no GIS for me.

hey med school kids--doing some research on top medical innovations of the last ten years and what kinds of innovations we can look fwd to for the next 10.any ideas for clinics/institutes/hospitals should i contact for comment on this? i have some obvious names (mayo clinic, etc), anyone not on the radar who might be good?

search "atul gawande"

he's got loads of articles on improving the practice of medicine (think there's a new one in the new yorker right now?)

u love him!

also speaking of medical school:

done:
- psych
- pharm
- path

pending:
- neuropathophysiology (GOD HELP ME)
- ENT (??????????)

i do love him!

i dont know that it would be easy to get in touch w/ gawande for an interview in the next couple days

do u want to interview my dad y/n

he has lots of opinions 4 u

i guess u were probably hoping for helpful responses

i forgot yr dad was a doctor!

i sort of assumed he was billy buffalo

i wish

what a thing for a child to do, to wish that her own father was just a man in an animal suit

Hey Max, would your research extend to the focus on medical errors and evidence-based practice and all that? I think To Err is Human from the IOM came out in like 1999 or 2000, and that seems like it was a big deal. There are a couple of books from a few years ago that springboard off that IOM report that are basically all about how tens of thousands were/are dying because nobody was washing their hands and such (I forget the titles offhand, but one is by a guy named Don Berwick and the other is by Robert Wachter and a dude whose name I cant spell). I think that ties in with Intermountain from that piece in the NYT magazine a couple weeks ago, too.

Also as an orthopedics nerd I have to mention the ridiculous advances in trauma surgery and prosthetics that have been going on since the wars started, and the countereffect of psychiatric disorders in people who would have just died in Vietnam or WWII.

the prosthetics thing is definitely on my list--the evidence-based stuff tends a little bit too much towards "policy" for what were looking for? i think? but i may try including it

C-L,

Where does an ortho nerd go for nerdly indulgences? Aside from a stint in the ER, almost all my clinical shadowing before school was orthopedics, and I'm crazy about it. Not in a nerdy way, since I don't know squat, but in an aspirationally nerdy way. Like, my interest in orthopedics almost makes me guilty, but there it is: I secretly just want to use power tools.

Btw, have you been to a Shrin3r's hospital? They might actually be that despicable application essay reason I decided that medicine was a good idea.

also lol at punctuation and putting on airs to win the esteem of a colleague

Oh, also I remembered that it is now basically impossible to talk to neurologists without them going "Oh man just wait a couple of years and we are going to BLOW YOUR MIND with how much we can do" between Deep Brain Stimulation and stem cells and limiting traumatic brain injuries and generally understanding what the hell is going on in the brain. I am not 100% sure what hospitals are at the leading edge of that, though. Between that and learning about concussions from the NFL it is all exciting enough to make me flirt with going into neurology.

I have similarly also heard such things about Interventional Radiology (although sometimes the Interventional Radiologists just talk about making $$$), since they are taking on procedures that used to be done blindly (or with larger incisions) by other fields. Supposedly talent is draining out of cardiothoracic surgery, since you rarely go open-heart anymore, but you can stent all day long. I still have very little idea what the hell interventional radiology actually entails, though, since the conversation rapidly goes from "look at how we can see EXACTLY where this needle is going" to "Look at how awesome all of our equipment is". To be fair it is pretty awesome.

haha, neurology is hilarious, though, esp since it seems like a great deal of it is pointing to the precise location of the lesion, detailing how exactly it is the pathways are disrupted, and then crossing your arms and looking like a kid who built a model. "see, there it is? pretty sweet, huh!" "so now what? does it work?" "...wait, waht"

i have been very persuaded by the neurologists, if only because i tend to be a person who likes to solve a puzzle and then do ~nothing~ about it

and yeah, IR is also pretty intriguing because it is just so deeply nerdy.

actually knowing and CARING how imaging works + knowing enough anatomy and physiology to be able to read scans like a g + buying sweet computers and lol MRIs and thinking of them like someone else thinks about delivery trucks + doing spaceship surgery w/video games + all of the money in the entire world = profit???!!!!!!

i'm actually just wondering when radiology will change its name to something more specific and descriptive.

Actually my institution puts out a higher percentage of orthos than any other med school year after year, so we are kind of indulged. Although there are many dudes who are more typically ortho-y than me (i.e. very tall dudes who played sports at a high level and call each other "bro"), which makes me slightly nervous. Most of my interest was built up over years of athletic training and physical therapy work going way back to high school, where I got to watch all kinds of horrible knee trauma. But then this summer I was at Children's Hospital LA working on an ortho research project and oh man kids with congenital defects <3 <3 <3 so rad Best Ever. Plus hanging with orthos (and PTs) all day was way less about "I am IMPORTANT listen to ME I am an IMPORTANT DOCTOR" than working with/shadowing the avg surgeon in my experience. Maybe it is just a West Coast vs. East Coast thing, though.

I have not been to a Shriner's hospital. There seemed to be some interaction between the Shriner's in LA and CHLA that I didn't get to be a part of, but it looks like the closest one to DC is in Philly. We do not even get to rotate at Children's National Medical Center in DC because that is apparently GWU's (and maybe Howard's) hospital. We get to go to Walter Reed, and they don't, so there is that.

Yeah it is kind of odd to be super-concerned about the fact that there really ought to be some gigantic expansion of primary care and yet at the same time be like "I want to go into a sub-subspecialty, why because it look interesting". I am part of the problem! Although it could be worse, I could be gunning for that #1 Derm spot.

Yeah it is kind of odd to be super-concerned about the fact that there really ought to be some gigantic expansion of primary care and yet at the same time be like "I want to go into a sub-subspecialty, why because it look interesting". I am part of the problem! Although it could be worse, I could be gunning for that #1 Derm spot.

― C-L, Monday, November 23, 2009 6:14 PM (2 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is like the central tension, for me. the us and the world just needs more ppl doing general practice and yet surgery/radiology/etc are just so dang intriguing. like i actually worry that i'd go into GP and feel like i'm working a 'desk job', even though i routinely grouse about the how what the world needs is more GPs and less academics/specialists

obv the best choice is to do the thing to which you are most inclined (for whatever reason), but sometimes i think it'd just be crass and selfish if i was like 'fuck it, ophthalmology is my SHIT'. but then you know i think about how the eye is pretty dope and i can understand why someone might want to spend a lot of time dealing with it

Yeah the guys who can come in and give a lecture of like "Look at all this crazy shit that can happen you guys!" are almost always more fun than "Here is why it is bad that people are so fat now", even though obesity and hypertension and all that are way more of an issue than the crazy stuff that people usually only get on House. And then the specialist guys come in and be all "We can do medicine with positrons and lasers and SCIENCE!" and then an old guy tells you what a 3rd heart sound kind of sounds like usually.

The exception for me is with pharm since it is kind of awesome every time I watch ads for boner pills because now when they say "Do not take Viagra if you are taking Nitrates for chest pain, as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure" I can nod my head knowingly.

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/geneticmedicine/

max - not sure how widely your defining "innovation" but these dudes (including most recent nobel laureate) are doing some pretty interesting research in medical genetics. i cant think of one specific breakthrough that might be worth writing about but i bet the have a press office that can put u in touch with someone

thanks lamp thats exactly what im looking for

haha, neurology is hilarious, though, esp since it seems like a great deal of it is pointing to the precise location of the lesion, detailing how exactly it is the pathways are disrupted, and then crossing your arms and looking like a kid who built a model. "see, there it is? pretty sweet, huh!" "so now what? does it work?" "...wait, waht"

i have been very persuaded by the neurologists, if only because i tend to be a person who likes to solve a puzzle and then do ~nothing~ about it.

...pretty much. that's why i went into neurology, some combination of one-upnerdship and fatalism.

in real life, localization problems are mostly put into the cold hands of the MRI machine. not everything works out as cleanly as in brazis or blumenfeld. even aside from localization, neurologists have to face more vague, complex and/or unknowable clinical situations than other specialists except psychiatrists (unlike psychiatrists, we're expected to get the answer right). expertly-done clinical neurology takes more time and care than modern medicine usually allows: it's a bit of an anachronism. so it helps to have a self-concept that's heavily dependent on believing you're the only one who has the brains and willpower to sort through the morass of possibilities to find the shining nugget of clinical truth. self-satisfaction in problem-solving and patient care has to make up for the lack of some of the more tangible rewards that accrue to practice in, say, interventional radiology. therapeutic options in neurology are improving all the time, but i'm afraid we're a long way from the sort of revolution that would make treatment and cure the most rewarding part of the field.

old maxim that will tell you if neurology is right for you:

if you don't understand it, it's psychiatry;
once you can explain it, it's neurology;
once you can fix it, it's neurosurgery.

that's about right. neurology, day by day, isn't about the great unknowns (oliver sacks case studies aside). it's mostly about accurately explaining complex (and often obscure) problems we can do little about. and most of our promising/experimental therapies are really surgical and/or interventional (epilepsy surgery, DBS, endovascular procedures, m-a-y-b-e stem cells). someday neurologists as a tribe might show an interest in learning some of those techniques themselves, but for now we're generally happy to pass them off to NSx or Rad.

bottom line, if you like dealing with people and being the only person in the hospital who can figure out what's wrong with Mr X, you're going to have a lot of fun in neuro.

hello plasmon!

(unlike psychiatrists, we're expected to get the answer right)

I will be stealing that line, thankin' U Dr. Plasmon.

Plasmon, don't neurologists ever work closely with cognitive neuropsychologists on therapies, in or out of the hospital setting?

plasmon what are the answers to my neuropathophys exam tomorrow