I had a premed college student with me, a young lady trying to figure out if medicine was for her, and what exactly a neurologist does.
The patient, a gentlemen in his mid-70s, had just left. He had some unusual symptoms. Not implausible, but the kind of case where the answers don’t come together easily. I’d ordered tests for the usual suspects and walked him up front.
When I got back she asked me “what do you think is wrong with him?”
Dr. Allan M. Block
Without thinking I said “I have no idea.” By this time I’d turned to some scheduling messages from my secretary, and didn’t register the student’s surprise for a moment.
I mean, I’m an attending physician. To her I’m the epitome of the career. I got accepted to (and survived) medical school. I made it through residency and fellowship and have almost 26 years of trench-earned experience behind me (hard to believe for me, too, sometimes). And yet I’d just said I didn’t know what was going on.
Reversing the roles and thinking back to the late 1980s, I probably would have felt the same way she did.
Of course “I have no idea” is a bit of unintentional hyperbole. I have some idea, just not a clear answer yet. I’d turned over the possible locations and causes, and so ordered tests to help narrow it down. As one of my attendings in residency used to say, “some days you need a rifle, some days a shotgun” to figure it out.
Being a doctor, even a good one (I hope I am, but not making any guarantees) doesn’t mean you know everything, or have the ability to figure it out immediately. Otherwise we wouldn’t need imaging, labs, and a host of other tests. Sherlock Holmes was a lot of things, but Watson was the doctor.
To those at the beginning of their careers, just like it was to us then, this is a revelation. Aren’t we supposed to know everything? We probably once believed we would, too, someday.
What combination of tests and decisions will hopefully lead us to the correct point.
Most of us realize that intuitively at this point, but it can be hard to explain to others. We have patients ask “what do you think is going on?” and we often have no answer other than “not sure yet, but I’ll try to find out.”
We don’t realize how far we’ve come until we see ourselves in someone who’s starting the same journey. And that’s something you can’t teach.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.