Friday, January 9, 2009

Wise Words from my Preceptor

In my introduction to clinical medicine class we are assigned a preceptor to teach us various skills we will soon need such as:
how to take a thorough patient history
how to perform the necessary physical exam on a patient
how to choose a drug/drug regimen for a particular patient
etc, etc...

I had the opportunity to work with my preceptor some over the summer and then miraculously ended up with him as my assigned preceptor without even requesting him. (I think God's trying to point me towards family medicine or something) Anyway, he's really great to talk to because he got his MD at UMC and therefore understands what we're going through. His academic profile is a lot like mine. Never studied in high school and had really good grades, studied a little (the night before the test usually) in college and made it into med school, then hit med school, studied non-stop without the beautiful grades to show for it. So here's what he said yesterday that made me happy:

"Once I realized that the first two years were all a game and not about education, I quit worrying about my grades and bided my time until the clinical years started."

It's so true. You can learn 100% of the clinically relevant information for a test and then easily fail it. It's all about memory power and minute details. Some people have the gift of an other-worldly ability to memorize. Others don't. I most certainly do not - and that's just fine. I still have the ability to reason and understand which means I will be an okay doctor when I'm out.

1 comment:

Ewok said...

I've been told that by people as well. Although, I can never hear it enough. that makes me very happy to know. We'll be the rockstars next year :)