Example

The coronavirus disease pandemic has demonstrated the unpredictability of medicine - and the extremely important chance to improvise teaching. The virus itself is a monster serial killer of elderly, many of them healthy and holding a test kit with two red lines one moment, crashing with breathlessness the next. Many vulnerable patients, mostly unvaccinated, oscillated between "okay" and downright critical, sometimes within an hour.

Throughout this crisis, I have witnessed a multitude of opportunities to "learn how to learn."

Blessed are those of us who have gone through such once-in-a-lifetime public health crisis. After watching this mysterious virus in awe, we have plenty of stories to tell our our young doctors. As I looked back at our efforts to overcome the pandemic, I realized that we have turned many services into teachable moments. In the early days while we were still working out the behaviour of that coronavirus, many senior doctors like us set up isolation wards to admit all new cases, taking careful steps to triage out who were infected, and who weren't. Then we let new and young doctors follow our example, including interns to admit cases.

Which, it turned out, was the far more satisfying teaching opportunity.