BLOG: Celebrating the future doctor-teachers

March 30th was National Doctors Day, a special day to celebrate all doctors of America, and all doctors of the world.

In a prior post on my blog, I talked about the rewards of becoming a doctor-teacher. In this post, I will continue that discussion.

Last Friday, Jordan Ueberroth, a senior medical student at Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine, finished his elective rotation in our endocrinology division. He will start his post-graduate residency training in ophthalmology in Boston this summer.

Jordan is an exceptional medical student, with an obvious inclination towards scholarship. As requested of medical students during their electives, Jordan presented a PowerPoint lecture last week. He picked the topic of thyroid eye disease. That is not unexpected, given his career planning, but his lecture was so impressive; it was presented in such a way that it would easily serve as a powerful skeleton for a great review article. The topic, which Jordan coined as “TED,” for thyroid eye disease, was very well reviewed with excellent discussion of the basics as well as advances and updates in this field. To an old-school endocrinologist like myself, the lecture was quite educational. I have learned from Jordan that TED is not only limited to Graves’ disease ophthalmopathy, but that various eye complications can arise from various thyroid diseases. I also learned the simplified approach to clinical evaluation of TED and how best to use the Hertel exophthalmometer, as well as simple scoring tests for the severity of TED. I have also learned a simplified approach to medical management of TED.

After the lecture, I congratulated Jordan.

“Would you like to turn this into a manuscript for a review article?” I asked.

“Certainly,” He said.

I gave him some guidelines and suggested he add some pictures to the review article. Coincidentally, we saw one of my patients with Graves’ disease and ophthalmopathy last week. I invited her to come to clinic to volunteer, as Jordan would examine her eyes with the Hertel exophthalmometer. After she gave a written consent, she returned next day, and we took the pictures.

In 3 days, a 5000-plus word, eloquently written review article was ready to be edited and submitted, with three neat tables and two crisp illustrative pictures!

I could not believe how efficient Jordan was. It would usually take several weeks for such a comprehensive review article to be written.

This encounter with Jordan prompted me to write this post to be posted on my MedBlog in honor of Doctors Day, which was March 30. It is so rewarding for doctors in teaching settings to encounter such students like Jordan, the academic doctors of the future.

Over the years, I have encountered other students like Jordan. About a decade ago, Crystal Glassy was a senior medical student in our osteopathic medical school who had an elective in our division. Crystal was like Jordan in her passion for scholarship. Her husband, Matthew Glassy, was also a senior medical student in our allopathic medical school. When I talked to Crystal about a research or writing project, we mutually agreed that she would write a review article about medical alert tattoos. At the time, I had just published a case report about a patient with diabetes who opted to have a medical alert tattooed on his wrist instead of jewelry medical alerts such as bracelets or necklaces.

Like Jordan, Crystal also immediately began to work on the review article. We decided to write a comprehensive review about tattoos, in general, discussing precautions and health complications associated with tattooing. We also wanted to alert the medical community that there has been an emerging sector of patients who would opt for medical alert tattooing. As an emerging phenomenon, we were aiming to alert EMS and ER personnel to watch for such medical alerts when attending to unconscious patients, since they could be in a diabetic hypoglycemic coma.

Crystal wrote a wonderful manuscript, coauthored by her husband and me. The manuscript was promptly accepted for publication by a prestigious journal. Since its publication, this article has been cited by a number of publications about tattooing.

In addition to Jordan and Crystal, over the last 15 years in academic medicine, I have encountered other medical students with similar talents and passions.

It is indeed so rewarding to encounter medical students who express genuine interests in scholarship. It is so fulfilling to mentor such students and guide them towards scholarship. It warms the heart to watch these students progress in their education and careers. These are the doctors who promise to become the teachers of future medical students. They will be become the new generation of doctor-teachers themselves, to the future generations of doctors.

On Doctors Day, let us celebrate these future doctor-teachers.

Reference s :

Aldasouqi S. Am Fam Physician. 2011;83:796.