well, i hope that's true. i'm not very good at riding a bike. i never learned as a child, but i bought a huffy at toys 'r' us after college. my husband has been giving me lessons every summer for the last four years, but i still have trouble turning right. each year, i start unsure of myself and sometimes have an incident before i become comfortable on two wheels again. early in the biking season one year, i rode into someone sitting on a bench! (that's a long story.) anyway, the point is that even my rather poor biking skills come back pretty quickly ... but not instantaneously.
i hope i don't get out of practice with seeing patients. i wouldn't want to be the patient equivalent to that guy on the bench. for my daily bus rides, i carry three reading materials in my bag--Dr. Lilly's Pathophysiology of Heart Disease, the New England Journal of Medicine from April 2006 with an article about trans fats, and a pleasure reading book. i'm sad to say that i've read three books for pleasure in the last month, and the poor journal and textbook have not yet been opened. i even read the free daily newspapers left on the bus rather that crack open the textbook weighing down my bag.
there are two reasons i can come up with why i shouldn't be sad about reading books for pleasure.
- it's good for me. a physician i used to work for encouraged me to read non-medical books. he told me i would be a better doctor if i was more well-rounded, so he gave me a harry potter book as a going away present. i'm also not much of a sports fan, but i try to keep up with the sports headlines because it's something my patients are very interested in.
- somehow everything comes back to medicine. i'm currently reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. i thought it would be more about sales psychology. it is, but the first chapter discusses reasons behind a syphillis outbreak in baltimore in the mid-1990's. the debate about healthcare--who gets it, how they get it, and who pays for it--is ongoing; it's inescapable in today's world. sounds like a topic for a future post!
i'm a goal-oriented person. it's hard for me to accomplish anything without a to-do list. so, here it is:
- flip through one journal a day. i have a year's worth of NEJM's and JAMA's on my floor, and they are not moving to the next apartment with me.
- read two chapters a week in my heart book. i should know all of it, so hopefully it'll go quickly.
- continue reading one pleasure book a week. next week's picks: best food writing 2005 or mark kurlansky's salt: a world history. i recently read kurlansky's cod: the fish that changed the world, and it was a fun yet sobering read.
that sounds like a lot of reading, but i have a lot of time. that's also nothing compared to what i was reading my first two years of medical school. i have you all to keep me accountable!
1 comment:
Oh dear---you're going to put me to shame. I don't think I'll pick up a medical book until June. Even then, I don't know that I'll absorb anything.
Congrats on matching at your top choice.
-Parcho
/medicine 4th year as well
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