Zombie attacks on a Tuesday afternoon

Yesterday I had the distinct privilege of teaching second-year medical students the pediatric physical exam. In a set-up that is as crazy as it sounds, there were 20-some exam rooms each staffed with a pediatric practitioner (+/- a 4th year medical student) and a child ranging in age from 6 months to 10 years (+/- their guardian). Teams of 5 medical students would rotate through the exam rooms, each seeing an infant/toddler and a school-aged child, practicing the physical exam and learning tips and tricks for that ever-elusive view of the tympanic membrane. We had four teams rotate through over the course of about 3 hours, meaning that each child was subjected to 20 exams--hey, we've all gotta learn somehow. God bless the parents who agreed to this!

I had an enthusiastic 10-year-old who was in his 4th year of this mad house. He spent more time standing on the exam table or jumping off of it than he did actually sitting down, but somehow we managed to get through the afternoon. The highlight for him was blowing snot at the students when they looked up his nose with the otoscope; so much so that in the final session, he managed to blow so hard that he gave himself a bloody nose, which promptly put an end to the nose exam. He also enjoyed pelting the students with spit balls and telling "Yo' mama" jokes. He lamented at the end, "Now I have to wait a whole year to do that again!"

Many of the students had never examined a child before. I had to remind myself of this as they all stared at me blankly when I said, "Go ahead." One student said, "How do I do the throat exam?" (Really?) I said, "I don't know, how do we do the throat exam?" and my "patient" grabbed the tongue depressor, mashed his tongue down and gave a big "Ahhhhhh". I hope the student doesn't expect all kids to be that cooperative.

The grandfather of my patient was actually a retired pediatrician who had more experience than I will probably ever gain, and he seemed to think I had done a decent job (bloody nose notwithstanding), so maybe the students won't be so afraid to examine kids in the future. It makes me grateful for the awesome teachers that I had during my training and even now, who are willing to impart a small piece of their knowledge. It also makes me grateful that my job involves ducking spit balls and cleaning up bloody noses (or as the patient preferred to call it, "a zombie attack") instead of pushing papers and sitting in meetings. Is your job this fun?