The Experience
“Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.”
- Aldous Huxley
I just got home, post-call. I actually had a great day at the hospital.
In short, I learned (not for the first time) the value of experience in medicine.
I’m sure that I learned about Still’s Disease (a not common, but not super rare rheumatological disease) many times during my years as a medical student. I could have previously probably quoted the clinical findings and maybe even the treatment.
But recognize it’s presentation in a patient who had a fever of unknown origin? Well, I failed to do so about a month ago as an intern in medicine. It wasn’t until it became a bit more obvious that I put the puzzle pieces together.
Yesterday, I had a patient who had some clinical findings in common with my former Still’s Disease patient, and I immediately thought of Still’s on the differential diagnosis, and knew that calling rheumatology and ordering certain labs and tests would be important.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that you can read about diseases in books until your eyes are sore. You can attend countless lectures and view hundreds of powerpoints about a disease. But it’s not until you have a living, breathing patient right in front of you that you actually learn how to recognize a set of clinical findings. So much of medicine is learned at the bedside, and learned through experience.
I’ve had many experiences where I was awed at my attending’s aptitude at diagnosing a patient. And I’m starting to realize that while intelligence and many other factors contribute to the ability to diagnose, experience is an incredibly important component as well.
And it brings me joy to be experiencing residency and gaining all that wonderful experience. It’s something which I treasure immensely.
I could say more, but I’d rather eat and shower!
Photos: 1) A nice “trashy pic” taken over the weekend, with Micah trying to invade my pic and make the trash cool. 2) Me in front of my computer while typing this post. I just figured out how to take photos with my computer’s camera without the flash going off. Ahhh, experience!