I'm ready to rejoin the blogosphere and Twitterverse. I've spent the last week driving my physician and surgical assistant students toward their final anatomy examination. I have spent about every waking moment in the lab running through the anatomy, putting together Powerpoint slide reviews, and giving those Powerpoint reviews. The exam is tomorrow afternoon.
When I signed up to teach anatomy as my fourth-year "basic science" elective, I never imagined it could and would absorb so much of my time. In some ways. I have worked harder during this rotation than I did during my general surgery clerkship. (To put this into perspective, the current president of the American College of Surgeons is the department chair at my school.)
The exam covers the anatomy of the pelvis through plantar foot. There is a lot of complicated anatomy and clinical correlations in the bottom-half of the body. The PAs and SAs cover everything I did as a medical student, but they do it in about a month less time. From the outside, it's a seemingly impossible task. Just understanding the three-dimensional spacing of the pelvis has taken me hours upon hours during my medical school career.
But two very cool things happened in the last three days that prove to me a select few of them--the ones with whom I had spent several hours during the previous week--are ready for the test.
Saturday afternoon was the first time I realized some of the students really understand the anatomy. I was four-hours deep into an essentially seamless (read: one, short break) lecture of clinical correlations of the pelvis and lower limb. The lecture was supposed to be a "review," but this was the first time we had solely focused on the implications of the anatomy we had been learning (rather than just the anatomy alone). With about twenty slides to go, I began crumbling. I was forgetting core principles. I was ignoring basic test-taking strategy when we examined a series of practice questions. Worst, I was misspeaking (calling a nerve an artery, and vice versa) nearly every sentence (so they say). I was just exhausted.
My students didn't miss a beat. They could see my brain was fried, and they took over. They finished the lecture for each other. I clicked through the Powerpoint slides, and they talked themselves through it. I left the auditorium that evening like a proud father who had watched his child perform in a school play.
Then a brief second tonight convinced me that my students are going score well. I was leaving the lab when I overhead one of my sharpest students teaching a smaller group around a cadaver. She was running through the compartments of the leg, quizzing the other students on the neurovascular supply, and encouraging students to name the structures between her hands. I stopped just shy of the door that leaves the lab and watched. I watched her look into the eyes of the other students, reading their expressions for signs of understanding. I listened to her reword and focus their questions so she could fully address their misunderstandings. Here we were on the eve of a final anatomy exam, and this student was teaching her classmates. Amazing.
Tonight, that student perfectly illustrated my favorite code of the Hippocratic Oath:
"I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow." (The "modern version" written in 1964 by Dr. Louis Lasagna)
The essence of online pharmacy is sharing our human gains of knowledge with the rest of society. I can't begin to guess how many people, both students and physicians, I have met in the past four years who never learned this or ignore it all together.
Medical knowledge is not a personal property. It belongs to the cadavers who donate their most precious life savings. It belongs to the state citizens who pay the taxes to support public medical schools. It belongs to the security guards who guarded my library so I could study. It belongs to the physician and surgical assistant students who will one day share an operating room with me.
Whether you are a medical student, a physician assistant, or a practicing physician, do not leave your years of accrued knowledge and experience unshared. Though we can leave money and possessions to people after our death, knowledge and experience dies with the brain. Recall the oath of Hippocrates. Give your knowledge and experiences to others--you never know who or how it may help.
