In a last 2024 spurt of Jim Groom #BlogOrDie spirit (hey, bava, where is THE post on that?) more of a small but interesting observation I had (gulp) a month or go on a visit to my doctor.
I have to say as well how much I appreciate finding Dr B. While the Canada healthcare I have been blessed with since moving here in 2018 is fantastic, finding a doctor taking on patients was not easy (no resemblance to the featured image, more on that below).
This was semi-routine to example some bumps on my knew I was fairly sure were a flare up of warts which I had not seen for like 50 years. So there was a bit of scraping with a scalpel to be done. Dr B. entered with an aide and a younger medical student who my doctor was supervising. I was asked, and consented to let Doctor in Training S do the procedure.
I was struck by the influence of Dr B being able to supportively suggest how to do the steps, the small tricks that would help Future Dr S do this correctly, and even a small bit of humor. I know little about medical school but can likely underestimating how much more there is to passing the big tests, memorizing many things. This seemed to me the most critical part of learning, that could only be approximated in a book or video or demonstration.
Future Dr S has to know how to do this with a live person, on her own, day in and day out, with only a hundred fold more skills to weave into her tools, plus manage the interpersonal interaction.
There’s much more to being a doctor that I feel I take for granted. And not totally a swipe towards the Thing That is Changing Everybody’s Work, as next visit Dr B told me about and asked to use something called HeidiHealth that transcribed our conversation into notes she could review, rather than spending time doing a lot of manual entry.
Finally, as someone who grew up watching Marcus Welby on TV, plus ER, and having older white haired doctors, there is a life point where you walk into a new doctor and notice the first time that they are younger than you, maybe significantly. That is just a small note, nothing dramatic, and you move on from it. But the first awareness stands out.
But just wanted to acknowledge that moment of seeing powerful, in the field, teaching, in the moment. I made sure to say something about this to Dr B and Future Dr S.
Where else in the world to you see that happen? (I get daily stories myself from my Cori)
Featured Image: Sure anyone could slap a prompt into a GenAI tool and gotten a picture spat back. Where’s the art in that? The google offers plenty of open-licensed images on a search for Lego doctor (a trick from my old Image Seek Toolkit) such as Female Doctor flickr photo by Nursing Schools Near Me shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license. This one only came up when I added Female to the search terms, and still very few, many were figures of NASA figures (Doctors yes). Biases were built in long before GenAI wobbled along.
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