half moon console table
3 years ago
Monday, November 12, 2007
med school is actually acting school
We interviewed standardized patients today. Groups composed of six students walked from room to room, and each of us was assigned a specific room to interview a patient. I was last to interview a patient in my group, and, up to this point, I had observed my peers getting grilled for not showing enough empathy for the fake patients. So I knew I needed to lay the emotion on thick with my patient. Thus, I did everything short of crying to show my concern for a lady who had been experiencing abdominal pain as a result of heroin use. I don't think I'd feel sorry for this person in real life, and I certainly didn't feel sorry for her when she was receiving thirty dollars an hour to say, "my stomach hurts." At the end of the interview, I was praised for my ability to be empathetic, but I've never felt so phony in my entire life.
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28 comments:
DR. WEXLER: In your packet you will find the disease you have been assigned and the symptoms you will need to exhibit.
MICKEY: Bacterial Meningitis. Jackpot!
KRAMER: Gonorrhea? You wanna trade?
MICKEY: Sorry buddy, this is the "Hamlet" of diseases. Severe pain, nausea, delusions, it's got everything.
KRAMER (to the man beside him) Howbout you, do you wanna trade?
MAN: Sure.
KRAMER: Okay, what do you got?
MAN: The surgeon left a sponge inside me.
KRAMER: Good luck with that.
a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
nausia, headache, indigestion, up-set stomach, diarhea
Perhaps she should have been forced to vacate the bed for someone who didn't bring on their own demise. Empathize with that, junkie.
"Our eyes met across the crowded hat store. I, a customer and she, a coquettish haberdasher."
Yeah, good thinking, anonymous. Vacating beds for people "who didn't bring on their own demise." Kids who swallow stuff and choke? Pfff. They did it to themselves. Let's not treat them, either.
I hope you're not a doctor.
the difference is that the adult knows better.
Conflating junkies and children is absolute moral relativism, and is unsatisfying both logically and ethically. Now I am sickened.
93% chance that sickened supports universal healthcare.
This reminds me of that wonderful conceit that obesity is an "epidemic." Those fried snickers bars jump into people's mouths the same way that heroin sneaks into their veins: Against their will!
I don't support universal healthcare, but thanks for being a condescending generalizer, michael.
And, oh, I'm sorry that I used my example with kids. Here's another one: yeah, let's not treat smokers who have lung cancer, because they brought it upon themselves. Or let's not treat people who have STD's since they chose to have sex. Where do you draw the line? Should we treat people who get injured in car accidents they caused?
Who assigned you the righteous, arrogant job of being the great judger of who deserves treatment and doesn't, anonymous?
And, yeah. Let's forget about all the other causes of weight-gain besides eating. Obviously, all fat people brought it upon themselves.
Hey, did anyone bring the popcorn?
it's always embarrassing when one person in the room gets defensive because they doesn't understand that everyone else is, for the most part, joking around. females tend fall prey to this circumstance quite often, and my money says that 'sickened' has gotta be of the feminine persuasion.
and it's also embarrassing when i post any sentence with the phrase "they doesn't"
sickened,
wjw is intended to be a safehaven for all condescending generalizers. please be respectful of that.
I hate the sick and weak...survival of the fittest.
-Benz
First, what is a “righteous, arrogant job?” Is that something you need qualifications for? Is there a certification process? I think you meant to say my comments were righteous and arrogant. Unfortunately even that switch wouldn’t make it any more sensible, just a little less stupid sounding. If you found my comments righteous then the rest of this morass is fairly contradictory. I suppose it is tough to adhere to proper rules of English usage when you are tearfully pounding out a post whose main purpose is moral preening.
In my initial post, I was trying to highlight the absurdity of the situation with a little hyperbole, but when I got a response infused with self-righteousness [note how I used the term correctly here] posturing, I guess I just couldn’t help myself from responding. Of course people should be treated for disease, regardless of how they contracted them. But can we not pretend that all diseases are equal and that as a society we should commit resources towards curing those things people cannot avoid? Nothing in any of the previous comments would indicate otherwise. What your comments evince is a desire to abrogate the traditional American notions of self-reliance and personal responsibility in favor of the thin gruel of “compassion.” Your flimsy straw-man argument was derived from a crude caricature of how you believe those, who aren’t as ethically pristine as you, think about the world.
I look forward to another thoughtful, measured response.
P.S. Michael is certainly a “generalizer,” though I was unaware (before now) of that word’s pejorative connotation. Also, sickened, using the word “yeah” for emphasis doesn’t work, either in a written argument (I use that term in it's broadest possible definition to include your post) or in any other fashion.
ol' scooter had to pull up dictionary.com for 'evince'
anonymous people who don't want to publicly stand by their statements rule!
I stand by my words!
-Anonymous
relevant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UzEFa20pBU
Sickened
Congratulations, you're in the elite 7% of pretentious medical students that don't understand sarcasm who don't support universal healthcare. Also, this is just one of the many times that I've wished Venn diagrams could more accurately be portrayed via blog comment.
dear oh wise hip-hop-anonymous,
as a medical provider I would love to glean from your enlightened thoughts on medical ethics, but I have no idea what the heck you said; unlike you I haven't had much time to study english since junior high, so if you could break it down for me that would be nice; also, i have about 4 free minutes every day to read blogs, so perhaps you could use bullet points?
PS- One of the patients I'm taking care of right now was high on meth and ran out into the highway and was hit by an 18-wheeler and drug underneath it for a while; another one of my patients was shot by police with an assault rifle because he was trying to shoot them.
what's your point, langston? are you just trying to say, in so many words, that you have a hot wife?
SAT scores are in
surely, upon waking the next morning, one feels not a little embarrassed at having exchanged heated comments over someone else's blog.
if not, well, that would be embarrassing.
everyone just breathe. calm down. everything is going to be ok.
-new anonymous
First time here, and I've spent all my time reading comments. Justin, I feel this distracts from your brilliantly entertaining words, (though this was an entertaining exchange).
Are we all just watering down his greatness with our own meager opinions?
(This is your long lost acquaintance (nay, friend?) Kara Hudson.)
To contribute to the discussion: I watched Sicko the other day. It was heinously biased, yet convincing.
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