Rule #5 of the hidden curriculum:
Your residents and attendings are permitted to blame patients for their bad outcomes. They may say these things in front of you, the medical student, on rounds, in the hallway in front of the patient's room, to each other.
You, the medical student, must say nothing.
- If you agree, you will be told that it is unprofessional to blame the patient.
- If you disagree, you will be told that you are naive.
It is best to nod. If a vocalization is required, a grunt should suffice. If you have a tail, wag it.
Allow me to provide an illustration of such a scenario:
Case: Patient gets high with his friends on some crack/meth/speedballs/whatever. Decides to race his friends down a country road at 100 MPH. Drives into a telephone pole. Oh yeah, seat belts are for pussies. Comes to trauma bay. Dies. Kills friend in passenger seat and 2 year old child in road.
A tragic situation? Yes. Was the patient behaving stupidly in a way that directly led to his death and the deaths of others? Yes.
If you, as the medical student, feel you MUST say something, ONLY the following is permissible: "Oh that is SO SAD!!" You'll probably get yelled at for blaming the patient even for saying something relatively benign such as, "If only he had been wearing his seat belt."
Remember med students: You are the golden retrievers of the medical profession. Eager to please, ready to fetch anything at anytime for anybody, and always happy and positive. And preferably silent as well.
You are not allowed opinions. And if you have them, nobody cares anyway.
10 Pearls of Wisdom:
Damn. I can tell right now I'm going to have a hard time with that whole "shut up and smile" mentality.
Do you think it varies at all given different schools or locations?
I am guessing that my school is better than most. Though, who knows!
Oh, and for what it's worth, I made it through with only minimal problems (though with a fair amount of pent up frustration as you might have gathered). I am notoriously bad at keeping my own mouth shut. Ergo, you will be fine.
Old MD Girl and I did not go to the same school, but this was the same where I went. And everywhere else.
KMS = Keep Mouth Shut.
Smile and nod.
Oh and this works well when your patient to!
Hi OMDG,
I so enjoy reading your blog! I see you are an access wizard, and I wondering if you would be willing to answer a question?
I'm loving your series of rules about the hidden curriculum! Brings back memories of undergrad and nursing school. Keeping mouth shut is hard especially when there are blatant displays of asshattery.
BW -- I can try to answer an Access question, though it has been kicking my butt today so I don't know how much of a "wizard" I actually am.
:-P
Lol well - we are trying to merge information in access into a word letter. The table in access has multiple rows that we want to put onto one document instead of having seperate documents. For example:
Row1: John Doe, information 1
Row2: John Doe, information 2
Row3: John Doe, information 3
We are trying to get "information 1 2 & 3" to merge together on one document being sent to John Doe instead of three seperate letters. Not sure if this is possible or not. Hope this makes sense! :o)
BW -- I don't think it is possible in your current table format -- the letter function in word is only smart enough to look at one row at a time. However you might be able to use a combination of queries to arrange the data in the way that you want (I.e. John Doe, info 1, info 2, info 3 all in the same record) so that word will understand what you're trying to do. For instance, you could do a group by query creating new variables for the "first" record, "second" record, "third" record and so on. Then you can create your letter off of that.
Not sure if that is clear. Let me know if you want more help/this works.
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