Every summer around this time, a new crop of graduating medical residents go into practice. And while some doctors joke this is the time of year to not get sick, medical commentator Dr. Joseph Sirven has a slightly different view.
During a long evaluation of a complex patient with one of my young medical fellows, a doctor in training, I stood to the side knowing that he’d be practicing without me in only a few weeks. So I let him take the reins.
“Dr. Sirven, is there anything more you need to add?” the medical fellow asked.
I suddenly get myself back in the moment and answer, “No, that was great. Nothing at all.”
The patient then responds to my trainee, “Thank you for being so helpful. You’ve given me all my answers. I am so grateful for your help.”
I nod in approval grasping a larger truth.
In life there are instants when you step outside yourself and realize that something transcendent has just occurred. A threshold has been crossed. These moments are quiet in their passing and sometimes we’re just lucky enough to witness them and even luckier to appreciate what they are. As I watched the exchange, I understood that this student had matured into what I had hoped — the doctor that I would want to see when I need medical help.
Thousands of doctors in Arizona and across the country are finishing up their training programs. There are still standardized tests and research projects that need to be completed. Yet come July, those doctors won’t have the teachers next to them to make sure that everything is ok and they’ll be the teachers as they go out to practice.
It’s interesting that medicine, despite its lengthy and complex educational structure, is still fundamentally an apprenticeship. You train under people, you learn how to handle various clinical scenarios and then you’re let out. You know, "see one, do one, teach one." I can’t honestly remember the exact moment when I grasped I was ready.
So as the next generation of doctors is coming online, may we as future patients be blessed with doctors that have had THE moment when they crossed that invisible line between student and teacher.
Dr. Sirven is the chairman of neurology at the Mayo Clinic.