Bumps in the road

Yesterday my computer decided to go kaput and today we had the wits scared out of us by a lawyer. Let’s just say, this hasn’t been the best week yet. This week in school the focus has been on nerve synapses. While I realize it’s important to know how nerves transmit information, when we start getting into the minutiae including some physics equations, my eyes start to glaze over. In fact, I thought I was alone in this feeling but it turns out from a few chats with classmates that many are feeling this way. That’s somewhat of a relief, but we still need to know the material, so now it seems more like ‘misery loves company’. Oh well. We had a couple of great lectures today, one by a medical ethicist and one by a health care lawyer. The ethicist (a philosopher by training) gave us a good framework for making ethical decisions in a health care context where the wishes of the patient reigns supreme (over do no harm, do good, etc.). Then the lawyer talked to us about medical case law over the years and about negligence. Yikes! What was particularly scary was about a case of a medical student being held to the standard of what would be expected from a trained professional, when they did a procedure for the first time, screwed up and it resulted in permanently disabling someone. I think the whole idea of that is unsettling. Both that we can make one mistake that ends up disabling someone AND beyond just having to deal with that for the rest of your life, you may be sued and held liable for that mistake financially. Ugh. The ethicist introduced himself by talking about how a physician’s job is filled with problems. Every person we see every day has a problem they’re coming to see us about. However, when everyone groaned about that, he said “well, the alternative is working at the motor vehicle branch where there your job is about routine not problems". I guess you need to find the right balance of routine (in which you know what you’re doing) and problems (for which you need to figure out the answer) to have a satisfying career. I suspect that routine may be a long time coming for me in medicine. I also met a woman in my class this week that has similar interests to me in terms of integrated medicine, that is, being open to other health care modalities as having value for people and knowing more about how we can all work together to help someone to heal holistically. Anyway, it will be neat to keep up with her over time and see what career path she pursues. Keep your fingers crossed for me on the computer. I found out by calling Future Shop that they’ll be returning it to the manufacturer. Ugh. Why couldn’t this have happened in July instead of now?