House of Thought

It's been a long long time since I last posted. I assure you I'm still alive and well. Medical school keeps me pretty busy and for the most part the library keeps me isolated from interesting or funny stories.

Cheers.

http://www.fahrenhype911.com/

I haven't seen it yet. However, a friend of mine saw it last night and said it was pretty interesting. I am going to try and make some time this weekend.

On the same note, ol' Ted Kennedy came to my school last night and I sat about 10 feet away from him. I don't think I have ever heard such fiery rhetoric with such little substance, not to mention that his "charts" where the most errored and questionable pieces of data I have seen in a long time. I wish factcheck could have been there.

By far the most distastefull part was a joke where Ted implied that Cheney killed or kidnapped a grade school kid because he asked too tough of a question. If I had been involved in a womans death and somehow didn't "remember" what happened, I don't think I would be making inflammatory jokes about others. Out of the auditorium there were two people sitting arms crossed during the ovation, me and the guy next to me. I think this pissed Ted off because his face looked just a little bit extra Heinz red. Ohh well, I guess being a critical thinker doesn't get respect anymore.

After his talk the two things that stood out most in my head were:
1) How can you discuss healthcare in a room full of doctors and med students and complain about the costs of healthcare, without even addressing the topic of tort reform, skyrocketing malpractice insurance, and the resulting use of defensive medicine.
2) His buzz words were, "healthcare should be available and affordable." What the happened to that crazy thing called quality. Canada has healthcare for all, but I don't see people lining up for elective and cutting edge procedures like they do here.

So recently I went to a haunted house with some friends. Before we went I looked through a magazine with advertisments for the different places and there was one that described a supposedly very scary morgue theme. This seemed interesting at first glance, but then the thought occurred to me, "wait a minute, I spend 15 hours a week in a morgue." Which definetly took the fun out of going to a morgue haunted house. Not to mention that some of the disections I lean on and hover over would be enough to give the unexpecting some gruesome nightmares for life.

We ended up deciding on a haunted house that was supposed to have a choose your own adventure theme. It was pretty bad, not only were there no real choices, but it wasn't even remotely frightening. And, the corpse props just didn't have the same effect that they used to. Ohh well, maybe next year.

It's that time again, test time. Woo hoo. This time it's all about thorax and abdomen (a.k.a. everything in the chest and belly). There is definitely some interesting links going around the medical world...

But first, let me make this publically known. All you people who bring bags of carrots, tostidos, and celery to the library and are unable to close your mouth while chewing, you tax my wits to no end. It's like the Tell Tale Heart. You would think some of the brightest minds would have the manners not to eat like Mr. Ed.

Moving on,

According to the NYT, the symbol of perfect journalism, the government is not getting ready for a draft of 18-22 year old guys, but physicians and other up to 44 year old medical professionals. This doesn't surprise me considering the complete disarray military medicine is currently in. When you get more than twice the hassle for less than a third of the pay, have to salute the nurse, and get so few cases that post-graduate training is horrible, it's no wonder why the ranks are thin. I'm not worried, I am sure it is just more anti-Bush hysteria about the draft. Besides, if the service people really had nobody to fix them up, I'd go if called upon.

Draft for Medical Workers

Once again Doctors came out on top in a survey of prestigeous professions. They tied with scientists, however, I am sure this would be different if people actually had a clue what doing real science was like. I did academic research for over a year, and that was about 51 weeks too much. Let me just say, thank God that there are people out there who enjoy working in a lab and actually feel like they are making progress. The bad news is, doctors dropped 15% in prestige from 1998. But then again, everyone knows the show ER isn't as good anymore.

Doctors Top Prestige List

Finally, Oral Surgeons are getting an "MD" degree in 8 weeks in Antigua...frightening. If you want those letters after your name, earn them like the rest of us. I don't care how long you have been a DDS, that doesn't mean you can get an MD in 8 weeks. Let's just hope that more states follow California's lead by making this practice illegal.

Oral Surgeons and Offshore MD

I found a really interesting research study from Canada on the power differentials between male physicians and nurses, versus female physicians and nurses. It's rather interesting how the two are treated differently based on their sex. Let's just say I am glad I'm a male.

Read it here.

There is the sub place I go to regularly that is in the middle of the ghetto. For the most part it is dirty as hell, and every time I go in there I feel like I am playing Russian roulette for food poisoning with a sandwich. Yet, so far I have only gotten great subs.

It's just typical that today while in a very wealthy part of town I go to a pita place that is immaculate inside. Low and behold, my stomach as been feeling like it's about to explode for the past 4 hours... grrr...

Appearances are definitely deceiving.

So, I got pimped today, wasn't the first time, and certainly not the last. Pimping is the phenomenon whereby attending physicians or people of higher authority make an ass out of you by asking a million seemingly impossible questions. Follow the link below to gain insight into pimping.

The Art of Pimping

I got my exam scores back from the past unit and was surprised by how well I did. I still cannot believe that my scores could be so high in anatomy, especially considering it seemed like I studied much less than in the previous unit. I wish I could say I learned why I did better, but in truth I have no idea why my scores were significantly better. Hopefully I can keep doing whatever was working before.

Learned an interesting tid-bit today, supposedly physicians who allow their patients to call them by their first name are more likely to be sued than those who keep the relationship more professional. Something to do with the patient-doctor power differential.

As medical students we are supposed to introduce ourselves, here are some examples:

"Hi, I'm Mr. Thought a Student Doctor."
"Hello, my name is Mr. Thought I'm a medical student."
"Hi, my name is Houseof Thought and I'm a medical student."

I personally think I'll go with the latter because I think using the phrase "student doctor" is deceiving, since many patients probably don't understand what that means compared to "medical student." And also, I think I'll use my first name since at this point it seems awkward and I don't carry the authority associated with more formal titles. However, after four years, you can bet your ass I'll be going by Dr. Thought, just kidding, well kinda... ;)

Saw an awesome cartoon over at

A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure

Click the link above to view it. It's from Sept. 25.