Read Online Intern by Sandeep Jauhar - Free Book Online Page A

caused my patient to undergo a painful procedure he probably didn’t need.
    I often felt intimidated by the clinical acumen of my internal medicine superiors. On morning rounds, their eyes would turn to me and my throat would tighten and my mind seize, like an engine low on oil. I admired their snappy, confident style. I wasn’t sure how much I had in common with them, but fundamentally I knew I wanted to be like them. One afternoon, I watched a resident struggle to reinsert a breathing tube into a morbidly obese man with severe emphysema who, in a fit of delirium, had yanked it out. The patient was choking, grabbing his neck with one hand as he fought off the resident with the other. A pulmonologist suddenly appeared. He strode up to the bedside, pulled out a metal laryngoscope from his coat pocket, violently pulled the man’s head back and inserted a new breathing tube in one seemingly continuous motion. The whole thing took less than thirty seconds. “Carry on,” he said, strutting out of the room in a theatrical flourish. I must have looked awestruck. “That’s Hoffman,” the resident said. “He likes to intubate people.” I remembered him from a lecture he had given on respiratory physiology. In the lecture hall he seemed pedantic and disorganized, his handouts poorly written and pedagogically unsound, but in the hospital he was
the man
, powerful and in command. I envied his confidence, his swaggering style. It was what I yearned for in my new profession.
    So, in the end, I decided on internal medicine. In internal medicine, there was more to know, more to do, more potential to help people,and more potential to impress. It was, it seemed, doctoring in its essence.
    Medical school graduation fell on my parents’ thirty-third wedding anniversary, an unplanned but perfect gift. They beamed with pride as I strode into the auditorium in my cap and flowing blue gown. The commencement address was delivered by Dean Dowton, a pediatrician who spoke eloquently about his early dreams of becoming a doctor while growing up in the outback of Australia. “From that limited horizon,” he said, “I knew nothing of the world at large, let alone the world of medicine.” His words resonated with me. Not so long ago, ensconced in academia in a college town overloaded with knowledge and ambition, I had felt the same way.
    â€œHere today,” he went on, “we watch the best and brightest transit from an environment which is familiar to one which is new and exciting, even if a little anxiety-provoking. The world these new physicians enter will be one of contrasts: savoring success on the one hand, demanding duty on the other; exalted expectation, followed by endless effort. Are you, new medical graduates, entering a world beyond reach, away from the rest of society?”
    He went on to talk about what could be done to bridge the gap between the world of medicine and the world at large. “There are tangible things we all can do to make certain medicine is not a world beyond. You, parents and partners, will be a window through which these new doctors will look into the real world. You will serve this role many times over. We need those who care about us to provide a mirror for our actions as we step out into the brave new world.” To me, his comments seemed ironic at the very least. From the ivory tower of the university, the world of medicine and the real world had seemed one and the same. That was why I had decided to become a doctor in the first place. But evidently for someone who had spent enough time in the world of medicine, it was its own ivory tower, removed from the world at large.
    He directed his final remarks to us graduates. “Don’t be afraid to say ‘I don’t know.’ It gets easier every time you do it. Never be afraidto admit you don’t know something, most especially to your patients, but in doing so make a commitment to do your