Good Old Days

There is an unwritten rule that if you want to learn medicine you have to learn by words of mouth. I have come to believe more with every passing year that despite new gadgets like UpToDate, it is still apprenticeship that works for new doctors.

So what can I teach the new interns? They looked helpless indeed. I rose from my chair, and straightened my white coat. "Honestly, I once made a bad mistake during my internship." I tried to correct myself. "Well, I've probably made lots. Yep, but I learned a lot. A clever man learns from his own mistakes, but a wise man learns from others' mistakes."

I couldn't deny it. I get very excited when I think about my intern days. Even now. The memory stays. You could put me back at the hospital where I once worked as a surgical intern fifty years from now, in pitch dark, and I'd still know where I am.

"But off the record," I was asked, "what would you have done in a different manner during your internship if you happened to have a second chance?"

"Very droll," I replied immediately. "I would have kept a diary. I'm pretty sure I'd got lots to write down."

I know very well that memory is not, as many of us think, an accurate transcription of past experience. That's what they say. Memory, I was once told, is a story we tell ourselves about the past, full of distortion, wishful thinking, and unfulfilled dreams.