The baseball model: post-WWII surgeons as young as age 18?

Is Medicine all Memorization?

Feb. 2011

https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/is-medicine-all-memorization.798555/

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cowme:
It's like learning a language. At first, you are just memorizing lists of words, then you memorize the rules. Eventually, it all just comes together as second nature. You will reach third year and see a patient with chest pain, and as you talk to him, you will just know what is going on, and what studies and meds he needs...it will just click one day, same as any language you work at enough

Perrotfish:
Great metaphor, though third year might be a little fast for some of us. I don't think I'll be 'fluent' until at least part way into residency.

getdown:
. . . So, yes, during the early parts of your education you WILL HAVE TO MEMORIZE a **** ton of stuff that is incredibly dull and more often than not will be completely useless outside of class tests. . .

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From a student doc forum, some of the good and bad of memorization.
 
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Dodger pitcher Hyun-jin Ryu who's now 31. And per this model, he might be transitioning from surgeon to doctor, or he might not. And both would be viewed as perfectly "normal."

scheduled to start game 2 of the NLCS against the Milwaukee Brewers on Saturday, Oct. 13th
 
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And sports has a heck of a lot more healthy interplay between theory and practice than most other fields do, and should not be too readily dismissed.

For example, maybe a medical system could have doctors first be specialists like cardiologists, or ophthalmologists, or radiologists, and later in their careers become generalists like internists, family practitioners, or pediatricians, and these generalists would be viewed as the pinnacle of the profession.
 

Jack Brisco

Banned
And sports has a heck of a lot more healthy interplay between theory and practice than most other fields do, and should not be too readily dismissed.

For example, maybe a medical system could have doctors first be specialists like cardiologists, or ophthalmologists, or radiologists, and later in their careers become generalists like internists, family practitioners, or pediatricians, and these generalists would be viewed as the pinnacle of the profession.

No. What that means is just when you are at the top of your game in your specialty, and at least in the USA making a ton of money, you'd become a generalist, throwing away that expertise and making a fraction of the money. Sorry, just won't fly.
 
I hate to say this but to use the only quote from Jimmy Carter I'd ever use, he once opined "life isn't fair". The bright medical student who longs to be a surgeon, but has 10 thumbs simply is not going to achieve his/her desire. There is more to being a surgeon than simple manual dexterity. The hours suck more than any other specialty with some variation, and the training is both longer and more brutal than other specialties. You also need to be good at doing physical examinations and diagnosis, just as much as the non-surgical specialties. In any case, trust me when you are good at what you do, have a family is NOT the time you want to go back to do 2-3 years of residency training in a new specialty, and then start at the bottom.

Most doctors, surgeons or otherwise, choose their specialty based on interest, training time, lifestyle etc. Of course, income can play a part, but one of my nieces who is a doctor, and quite good, told me at graduation that she had very much enjoyed the surgical specialty I practiced (still working at that time) but she had seen my lifestyle since when she was quite young and that was not for her for a variety of reasons.
 
. . . become a generalist, throwing away that expertise . . .
I don't know if it has to be that way. Currently, in the case of a hospital administrator or a person weighing in on research funding decisions, we have a person essentially acting in the role as generalist having major input as far as where resources are likely to do the most human good.
 
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New Guideline Will Allow First-Year Doctors to Work 24-Hour Shifts

New York Times, Gina Kolata and Jan Hoffman

Nov. 17, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/health/us-doctors-residents-24-hour-shifts.html

'First-year doctors in training will now be permitted to work shifts lasting as long as 24 hours, eight hours longer than the current limit, according to a professional organization that sets work rules for graduates from medical schools in the United States. . . '
And having sleep-deprived interns and residents, of course it affects patient care. The only argument would be that it doesn't affect it that much, or that the residents are backed up by the older attending physicians. But from the young doctor autobiographies I've read, the attendings are in point of fact not all that readily available and do mind being bothered when they're not really needed.

What seems to be the "obvious" solution is for it to just take longer to become a doctor.
 
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. . . one of my nieces who is a doctor, and quite good, told me at graduation that she had very much enjoyed the surgical specialty I practiced (still working at that time) but she had seen my lifestyle since when she was quite young and that was not for her for a variety of reasons.
I wish your niece all the best in the specialty of her own choosing! And it looks like you yourself did quite a bit of human good, more so than a more reasonable schedule would have produced. :) Some questions:

1) Can a person improve enough in physical dexterity so that someone in the 20 to 40 percentile, could maybe ramp up to around the 55th percentile? And I did try to pick middling low numbers.

2) What about the person with thoroughly middling college grades and MCAT, but great spatial intelligence and who in point of fact could be an innovator in surgical technique? And I think this is probably my strongest argument.

3) Might the profession of medicine evolve so that there's more total doctors and less crazy schedules?
 
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11 Ways to Teach Academic Skills to Visual-Spatial Learners

http://www.institute4learning.com/2...h-academic-skills-to-visual-spatial-learners/

  • Allow time after teaching a concept for students to close their eyes and visualize what they have just read or learned (e.g. ”picture in your mind’s eye how the main character we’re studying in this novel might respond to his car breaking down”) .
  • Let students draw pictures of the material they are learning (e.g. making spelling words into pictures, drawing images of their vocabulary words, using pictures to illustrate a project etc.)
  • Use computer software or apps that are highly visual and interactive to teach academic subjects (e.g. let students illustrate their ideas with draw and paint software or study history using The Oregon Trail software program).
  • Allow students to demonstrate their understanding of a concept by building a model of it (e.g. clay figures to illustrate a story they’ve read, a diorama to show an historical event, pipe cleaners or commercially-made construction materials to show the structure of a molecule etc.).

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Boy, if the kid needs to close their eyes and imagine after doing work, we're going to think they're slow, autistic, artistic . . . or perhaps a little of each! ;)

And school has very much evolved to teach just two: linguistic and logical-mathematical. Both because of the accident of history, and plus the fact that regimented education "feels right" and is what we're used to.
 
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/expert-rule-10000-hours-not-true-2017-8

‘ . . . In deliberate practice, you need to be fully tuned in to learning the skill you are working on, and minimize distractions as much as possible (put away your phone). Because focusing intently takes so much energy, you can really only sustain that level of practice for 60 to 90 minutes at a time, perhaps two hours at most. . . ’
Too high a standard. We can’t always be zen masters.

Although I’ve read that with students or young surgeons watching operations they can barely see (for example, holding the retractor), surgical training seems to very much go in the other direction of huge hours of low-quality study/observation.

PS We need to be cognizant and respectful that the word ‘practice’ in medicine means a surgeon who’s already plenty good enough doing his or her best for an individual patient.
 
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