So, as I previously mentioned, I'm taking a medicine and humanities class, which is great because we roll in at 10:30 and then sit around talking about stuff.
Here's the problem. We are forever talking about stuff in fantasy-land, without ever getting around to discussing how it applies to reality-land. An example. Discussing the much-loved concept of balance. Every so often in medicine we sit around and talk about balance (in your life), how its so important to have, and these are some of the things that its important to make time for, and these are some things that can help you achieve balance... And the discussion takes place with the unspoken assumption that *someone* in medicine actually has balance in their life. Which they don't. But while we're off in fantasy-land talking about balance, its against the rules to bring up the reality that it may be a great goal, worth striving for, but nearly impossible to achieve.
Today we were talking about the deconstructionist model of modern medicine, how we reduce the individual to a few pertinent details, to symptoms and physical findings. How we don't really connect with patients. The guy leading the discussion posed the question 'is there something wrong with medical education?' to which I finally had to reply that medical education as it stands today prepares us for medicine as it is practiced today, and while the system has big flaws that I believe will eventually have to change one way or the other, we are nevertheless trained to deal with what we've currently got to work with.
He listened respectfully to my comment and then was silent a moment.
And then led the discussion to *his* main point, which was that you have to give your patients more time and that's how you connect.
I tried to bring the discussion into reality-land and he took a giant step back into fantasy-land, where you can somehow ignore that you've got 15 minutes to see each clinic patient, and if you spend an hour with each of them you're going to get really, really behind and then all the others will get mad at you because they waited four hours and you still weren't caught up, and your boss was mad because they can't bill for the patients that got frustrated and left, and your contract says you'll see x number of patients... You see what I mean?
Its a little frustrating, especially because the majority of the class seems to be perfectly happy to travel to, even live in fantasy-land for as long as possible.
I've also noticed that a lot of people involved in the arts are very pretentious, but that's a different diatribe for another day.
On a different note, I'm very proud of my new header, not just because I really like how it turned out but also because it is 100% my own work.
1 comment:
I like your header too!
And it sounds like some of my education classes in college. They would give us 5 methods of discipline and then assume that took care of it all. In reality, none of those 5 worked and you were on your own.
I also found this as they discussed all the ways you could help students who were falling behind in math. In reality some kids refused to make any effort and you couldn't force them.
I think politicians frequently live in this ideal dreamland instead of reality as well.
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