Anonymous Doctor

A commenter asked in the comments on the previous post about my reference to the lackluster state of medical education. I wasn't necessarily intending to make a serious point in the post, but, sure, I'll try. It's superficial. There are big topic areas that patients, especially in an outpatient clinic setting, expect their doctor to know something about, and medical school just doesn't touch them. Ophthalmology, dermatology, allergies, smaller specialties like that. There's elective time, but you still can't cover them all. And even the ones you do cover-- two weeks shadowing an ophthalmologist, who's mostly performing plastic surgery on the bags under rich people's eyes, doesn't really accomplish anything as far as adding useful knowledge. I don't necessarily have a solution-- more time learning one thing means less time learning something else-- and I know it's expected that interns (and residents) can't do things entirely on their own, and that's why there are attendings, and there's supervision, and checks in the system... and of course you get better over time and with more exposure to patients... but that doesn't mean you don't start out lost and mostly unprepared for the situations you're forced to deal with.