As A Doctor, What Are Some Of The Toughest Exams That Gave You Headache While Studying Medicine?

This question was originally was posted on Quora.com and was Jaspal Rana, Doctor, I know a few things about drugs and diseases.

During my undergrad days: Pediatrics.

Not because I found the subject excessively difficult. No sir. Compared to Medicine, Surgery, and those god-forsaken first year subjects, it was a breeze.

But boy, it was so boring. And there were so many charts. You had to memorize developmental milestones, immunization schedules, indices of malnutrition, nutritional value of foodstuffs, and whatnot. To be honest, the only topics I gave a damn about in Pediatrics were cardiology and genetics.

And to add insult to the injury, dealing with kids is not one of my stronger suits. I mean, infants are so fragile. Adorable, but fragile. I feel like a monster holding them; you know, the one who is bound to crush their tiny skulls, if he is not careful.

As Lady Luck would have it, the case I got for my Pediatrics clinical exams was that of a 5 month old child suffering from a heart defect known as the Tetralogy of Fallot. The child was restless throughout but it was not a particularly difficult case (though TOF is a serious condition), and the presentation went reasonably well. Finally, the examiner asked me to demonstrate a deep tendon reflex — the ‘knee jerk’ — on the infant. For those of you who don’t know, it is performed by tapping the patellar tendon just below the knee with a hammer. Like this:



I elicited the reflex, but to my horror, the child started crying. The examiner was satisfied however. I was later told that the mother had not fed the child that morning.

God, I hated myself, and the examiner, and the mother.

And I hated the subject. I still do. No offence to all the wonderful pediatricians out there, but I never could handle it with grace.

Source