Sat 17 Feb 2007
All medical students are a little bit neurotic. We need to be in order to survive medical school. We read through every single line in our notes over, and over, and over again. Every symptom, every side effect, every diagnostic tool may come back to bite us on exams or on the wards if we don’t learn it. This is why when our notes are crappily worded it annoys the hell out of me. For example:
Death cannot be solely attributed to failure of the kidneys since this clinical syndrome occurs in a setting of serious multisystem disease in which there are other malfunctioning organs but it is a major contributor to the overall demise of patients.
This is a run-on sentence. If the author couldn’t be bothered to edit their notes, why should I spend hours and hours of my life memorizing them? I know I’m going to anyway, but I’m frustrated.
That’s almost as bad as spending hours and hours reviewing notes that say things like: “In a recent study published in the New England Journal in 1977 involving 94 patients…”
I’m sure this sort of knowledge time-warp won’t be a problem…as long as we still treat epiglottitis with a prompt and copious bloodletting, we should all be fine.
what about when the notes say “this is not uncommon”….maybe i’m just slow…but i always have to stop and think—-are they saying it is common??
ok last one….talking about aplastic anemias… “onset is usually gradual, but may be sudden” lol…ok that one makes me laugh