The more time I spend in hospital, the more I realise how weird doctors are. We ask strange questions, and we actually get answers. A few times I’ve asked non-patients (friends and family) and received some awkward looks. I don’t think for one moment that we should STOP asking questions – but I do think it makes the medical profession pretty weird and unique. It reminds me of one of the most striking thing I read in Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: “Txiv neebs were polite and never needed to ask questions; doctors asked many rude and intimate questions about patients’ lives, right down to their sexual and excretory habits.” After a patient has had abdominal surgery, we ask… Have you passed stool yet? And some patients require more…. colourful vocabulary. When a baby has had surgery we ask the mother, Has your baby passed wind since the operation? When a pregnant patient has some spotting but a closed os and a live foetus, we ask… Did you and your husband have intercourse last night? When we present a breast cancer patient at an onco-plastics round we comment on their breast size as if it is completely normal. When someone presents with a tiny tiny defect: This is too small for a risky surgery right now. Wait til it gets bigger or symptomatic. When someone presents with a massive growth or defect: WHY DID YOU LET IT GET SO BIG?! Source
"Studying too much" should be redefined as "a medical condition that causes mental disorders in people, doctors in particilar". How come they only become weired in the course of or after their medical studies?
