Tales from Third Year

Cameron's back and posting some wonderful tales from his surgery rotation. I recall those months vividly, from the combination of fatigue, fear, and obstinate personalities. Cameron writes a disturbingly funny post is about a practical-joke surgeon from Argentina.

Another post is about 'framing doctors', the process by which some docs jump to conclusions about a patient and ignore contradictory evidence. This can be an invaluable skill for an experienced physician in an emergency situation -- I've previously mentioned some of the lessons of Blink on how extraneous data can cloud a diagnosis. But as Cameron points out, snap judgements can be ugly, too.