Consigli per un R1

Advice to young doctors from members of the BMJ ’s editorial board:
• Learn to cope with uncertainty
• Challenge what you are taught, especially if it seems inconsistent or incoherent
• Regard your knowledge with humility
• Be yourself at all times
• Enjoy yourself
• Try to practise medicine with the same ethics and principles you believed in when you started medical school
• Never be afraid to admit your ignorance
• Medicine is not only clinical work but is also concerned with relationships, team work, systems, communication skills, research, publishing, and critical appraisal
• Treat your patients with the same care and respect as if they were your loved friends or family
• Cure is not what everyone is expecting from you: your patients and their families may be just seeking support, a friendly hand, a caring soul
• Outside the family there are no closer ties than between doctors and patients
• Don’t believe what you read in medical journals and newspapers
• Aim at knowing how to learn, how to get useful medical information, and how to critically assess information
• The first 10 times you do anything—present a patient, put in an intravenous catheter, sew up a laceration—will be difficult, so get through the first 10 times as quickly as possible
• Although you should not be afraid to say “I don’t know” when appropriate, also do not be afraid to be wrong
• Cherish every rotation during your training, even if you do not intend to pursue that specialty, because you are getting to do things and share experiences that are special
• When you have a bad day because you are tired, stressed, overworked, and underappreciated, never forget that things are much worse for the person on the cold end of the stethoscope. Your day may be lousy, but you don’t have pancreatic cancer

Advice from Dave Sackett, the father of evidence based medicine:
• The most powerful therapeutic tool you’ll ever have is your own personality
• Half of what you’ll learn in medical school will be shown to be either dead wrong or out of date within five years of your graduation; the trouble is that nobody can tell you which half—so the most important thing to learn is how to learn on your own
• Remember that your teachers are as full of bullshit as your parents
• You are in for more fun than you can possibly imagine

E per concludere...
“If you aren’t confused you don’t know what’s going on.” -- Jack Welch, former CEO General Electric

Tratto da:
Smith R. It's good to talk -- Thoughts for new medical students at a new medical school. BMJ 2003;327:1430-1433