Hey, who let YOU in here??
A reader boldly asked a very good question recently. What business do I, a first-year medical student, have being scrubbed into a total joint replacement? What do I know about surgery? I haven't even finished half of the academic courses yet, what good could I do standing around an already crowded surgical field with minimal (more like "zero") experience? It's a good question, and credit to the reader, he asked it in a very tactful way. So, what am I doing there? The answer, of course, is learning. Mostly. I also help out a little, but whatever I do could be done by the resident or the surgeon, or the scrub nurse. I pass stuff, I lift stuff, stabilize the patient when there's drilling or sawing or hammering to be done, that kind of thing. But the learning is the key thing. I'm learning what surgery is like, trying to imagine doing that a few times a week for the rest of my life. So far, it seems possible. But I've got ...