Round

My friend KM shared with us an article from Annals of Internal Medicine (see http://www.annals.org/content/153/7/482.short), for which he further elaborated his view in his own site (see http://drkmchow.blogspot.com/2010/10/round.html).

The article is a simple one. It describes the experience of doing ward round in 1960s, when the author was a medical student, and then what becomes of a round nowadays, when he turns to a senior physician.

When KM first showed us the story, the few of us (for example, old-style physician like my friend CB) could not agree any more. Although we are not that old to experience a ward round in 1960s, we were brought up in the 1980s and trained in early 1990s - when medical students and junior doctors were given a free hand to do anything.

For example, as a third-year student, we were required (not merely allowed) to write down in the hospital record the findings of history and physical examination for that few patients assigned to us. Our documentation became part of the formal record, and, as students, we could hardly hide our pride when we found the medical officer referred to our notes when he presented the case to the consultant. In fact, that senior physician - whose formal title was Reader in Neurology - gave us no tutorial and taught us nothing directly; all he did was to appear in the ward at unpredictable hours and check if we were seeing our patients.

The sobering truth was, we were too green to appreciate this very method of self learning (although a few years later we realized the benefit was huge). We grumbled that we were not properly taught - and our voice was heard.

That opened the Pandora Box.