I volunteered this past Sunday at one of our free student-run clinics and was working with mostly pre-clinical students. We talked a bit about applying to residency, and we practiced blood pressures on each other. One student remarked, “I can never hear the sounds!” and I told him to turn his stethoscope around. It was adorable. And reminded me of when I had to have that pointed out to me, and that I had to remember “earpieces point TOWARD the patient!”

Another student practiced presenting to me about a guy with GERD, and I asked a couple follow-up questions and the student said he hadn’t asked my follow-ups. I told him that was totally normal, fine, and not a big deal. I guess anyone can probably learn most things if they’ve been at it long enough (4.5 years and counting for me), but it was still amazing to me that I’ve become fairly good at making diagnoses on my feet, multi-tasking differentials while still talking to patients, asking pertinent follow-up questions. It’s pretty cool. A similar feeling to mastering a foreign language, I think.

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