MS8

Practice. Practice. Practice.

In medical school, I was incredibly blessed to be surrounded by so many passionate and talented and skillful family physicians. I was frequently in awe of them. No doubt, this influenced my own decision to go into family medicine (which I’ll blog about soon!).

One such physician that I admire is Dr. John Donnelly. His clinical knowledge seemed so vast, yet it was coupled with this intense humility. A phase he often used was, “Well, I’m just an MS##” and then he’d site the number of years it had been since his first year of medical school. I thought this was such a great practice, a nice nod to the practice of medicine. That we are always learning.

Recently, I got to work with a group of medical students as we cared for a few patients together. As we were checking vitals, a student struggled to put a blood pressure cuff on correctly. As she tried to pump up the air, the cuff continued to leak, making the task impossible.

It reminded me of when I was first learning how to check a manual blood pressure on a patient. I couldn’t hear the Korotkoff sounds at all. I had felt embarrassed to admit I was struggling with a skill my classmates seemed to pick up so easily or already knew how to do. It was only later and after many tries that I realized my stethoscope bell and diaphragm could be turned effectively on/off by twisting it. It had been off.

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As I’m building up my practice, I’ve been blessed to have the opportunity to work in an urgent care practice here and there. Recently, I had a toddler and her parents present for URI (upper respiratory infection) symptoms - oh, and her NG (nastogastric) tube had dislodged on the way to the clinic. They pleaded to have it replaced at the clinic so they didn’t have to spend the afternoon in the emergency room. Fortunately, the tube was still taped at the length it had been placed at, so I eventually agreed and was able to replace it relatively smoothly. To confirm the position of the end of the tube in the stomach, I held my stethoscope against the small toddler belly, listening for the faint gurgling sound that could be heard as air passed into the stomach when her mom flushed a syringe full of air into the tube. I heard the gentle gurgle. I passed the stethoscope off to the mother so she could hear as well. She had a difficult time appreciating the sounds. I ordered an x-ray to further confirm placement of the tube. As I waited for the results at my desk, I smiled as I realized my own auditory skills had undergone some training over the years.

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As the students and I were getting to know each other at the beginning of the session, one of them asked what year I was in medical school. I paused to think and answered, “I’m an MS8.”