While it is bad enough that medical residents are mistaken for students, I’ve come to realize that there are many other misinformed people in the community that do not realize what medical training entails. Yesterday I spent the afternoon at a private ophthalmologist’s office, and I chatted with his senior technician for a while (she has been working as an ophthalmic technician for 14yrs):

Technician: So, do you want to be a doctor?

Me: (wearing long white coat with my name embroidered on it): Yes, but I’ve finished medical school already. I am training to become an ophthalmologist.

Technician: So will you be doing surgeries as well?

Me: (getting agitated) Yeah, I chose to become an ophthalmologist because I wanted to perform surgeries.

Technician: How do you even learn to do a cataract surgery? Do you have to go through special training?

[Thought: she needs to be educated.]

At that point, a new patient arrived, and I walked off to examine him.

Later in the afternoon, I had another conversation with her that started with her asking me whether I had applied for ophthalmology training. While I assume that there are people who are bold enough to advertise themselves as future doctors when they were 10, 15, 20, or even 25 years old, it would have been pretentious of me to state that, “I am training to become an ophthalmologist” without having matched for a spot in residency.  This is frustrating indeed. Read more…

medicine medicine

Stumped about what to do for residency? Here’s the ultimate guide for career choice. Alfred Padilla, one of the endocrinologists up at Greenwich, graciously sent me his Venn diagram. It doesn’t include all the specialties, but you can extrapolate from the data:

medicine euphemisms, medicine

Even if you haven’t travelled by air recently, you probably have heard about airlines cutting operation costs by reducing services. Obviously, domestic travel has been hit the hardest. On United Economy Class, beverage service no longer includes any 0.05oz bag of pretzels to accompany the drinks (for flights < 2hrs). United has also opened up a dozen or so “Economy Plus” seats on their 737′s that offer an extra 5 inches of legroom. Their website states that these seats are available for one-time upgrades starting at $14. No bad right? Bad indeed. The $14 only gets you the seat on ultra-short haul flights only (Chicago <-> Detroit). On my flight from Chicago -> Philadelphia the other day, the upgrade was available for $40. Indeed, it was such a hot item that it seemed like the only takers were those willing to shove through the flight attendants barracading the division between economy and “economy plus” class. Read more…

misc rant, travel

Nice pretty icy trees

I visited my family in Kentucky after I had heard what the hellish snowstorms brought over the last few months. Before all the ice melted, the streets were lined with a picturesque amount of snow.  Afterward, the streets look like a disaster zone. There are still branches strewn about the neighborhood. Ironically, the streets and homes in the area don’t look as devastated when compared to the post-tornado carnage we had two years ago.  Read more…

misc life

I saw this electronic billboard at the Philadelphia Airport:

The demise of E. coli

We will never learn. E. coli will always get the last laugh. And for the record, E. coli is also a “native” of our colon. He makes Vitamin K for us. His nemesis C. diff is just waiting for him to die so that we can be blessed with foul-smelling, runny stools 10+ times a day (pseudomembranous colitis).

medicine euphemisms, life