15.6 Medical School 2nd Year

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6. Second Year Begins

In medical school the first 2 years is normally basic science lectures, laboratory experience and dissections but AECOM is experimenting so they put the 2nd-year students on a hospital ward in a teaching setting and rotate them through the specialties for part of the year.
   On the hospital ward, called clinical services, first is internal medicine, which means everything below the head except pelvic organs, and surgery. The boss is Milford Fulop - who came from the German school of teaching - very brutal and likes to take down students on morning rounds. Facing Fulop for questioning, his thick glasses glistening threateningly, a student finds his nerve melting before that terrible reflection.
   Danny as usual is being fed answers to weekly quiz questions by an erotic secretary. But Eddie now has his own act because he is literally living in library with Nina's kind help; most nights reading selectively but within the selection reading intensively.  
   Professor Edwardes, who sees Eddie Sundays at Seminar, has loaned Eddie his personal copy of Physician's Notebooks, directing Eddie to the chapter "Read Well."  So Eddie learns the technique of the Read Unit and the secret of Re-reading. Also how to instantly analyze a paragraph and fix it in his mind for its key idea. And as first months move on, Eddie is reading, among other books, Paul Dudley White's 1931 Classic "Heart Disease."  Dr White is the greatest cardiologist of the 20th century and beyond that he taught Fulop at Harvard. So knowing the contents of Dudley White's Heart Disease assures Eddie top of the class standing on morning clinical rounds in front of Fulop.

An example of Eddie and Danny each working his system: On Friday, last rounds of the week, Fulop selects a patient not previously known to the student group and asks for a heart exam by each student using stethoscope and then passes around a quiz whose question is: Describe the heart sound you listen to and write about causes and most probable diagnosis. Danny knows ahead who the patient will be so he is prepared to get his usual near perfect score. (He arranges a minor mistake occasionally so the professors will not get on to his trick) Eddie does not know who the patient will be but has read and reread Dudley White's chapter on heart sounds and he gets a perfect score.
  End of Chapter. For next, click 15.7 Research