Medical students enlightened about key elements to a good practice

May 30, 2018 News

“Prepare for a paradigm shift in clinical medicine.”
These were the words of advice offered by Trinidadian Medical Professor, Dr. Vijay Narynsingh, as he delivered a stirring presentation at the recent Medical Conference held by the Texila American University for its medical students.

Professor Vijay Narynsingh

In his informed deliberations, Dr. Narynsingh explained to the students, “Here in pre-clinical [studies] you are embedded in books, in library, in reading and writing, but when you go to the clinics the hospital is your new library, the ward is your book, and each patient is a page in that book that has something to teach you.”
He also pointed out to the medical students that even as they advance their medical knowledge, they must embrace the notion that each patient they will be required to see is unique.
“You can’t say well I saw a hemorrhoidectomy patient yesterday and so if there is another hemorrhoidectomy [case] today I don’t need to see that patient…that’s not true. Every single one is different, don’t miss a single case,” counselled Dr. Narynsingh.
A hemorrhoidectomy is a procedure to remove haemorrhoids, that is, swollen veins in or around the anus. Hemorrhoids are known to cause symptoms including bleeding, pain, itching, burning and irritation.
But according to Dr. Narynsingh, “if you see the same condition 15 times, that is 15 times better than seeing it once. So each patient you must pay individual attention to, and if you haven’t seen patients, then you haven’t read the book; if you haven’t seen patients then you cannot be a clinician…you cannot be a good doctor if you haven’t seen patients,” Dr. Narynsingh asserted.
As he enlightened the medical students of the immense benefits they are expected to gain from their exposure to patients, he underscored that “the attitude of caring is an important thing.
I find more and more, people are very mechanical about their patients. ‘Oh this is a case of thyrotoxicosis [an excess of thyroid hormone in the body]; it is not a patient who has a family, whose family’s life is disrupted because she has thyrotoxicosis, who has to journey so far [and] whose earnings are affected’. We must look beyond just the clinical scenario and start to understand people,” cautioned Dr. Narynsingh.
According to him too, “if we cultivate attitudes of caring, when something adverse happens to the patient, we suffer pain, we have feelings and from that we learn too.”
He, moreover, stressed the importance of “knowing” when practising medicine. “Information doesn’t fly into your head like flies or insects; information is something you actively seek, study, learn, repeat and know. It doesn’t just come to you, and people expect that learning is a passive exercise, but learning is an aggressive exercise, more aggressive than going to the gym because it is 24 hours a day…learning is a continuous exercise; it is for the rest of your life.”
Added to this, Dr. Narynsingh shared that there are some things that must be inculcated if medical practitioners are to give themselves the best practicing opportunity. He alluded to the importance of following-up with patients, since there is always a lesson to be learnt from each case.
The learning process is imperative, he said, since “you are going to make more wrong diagnoses initially than you will make right ones, and that’s a good thing. Certainly I like making wrong diagnoses, because I learn more from making a wrong diagnosis, because it pains me and I have to go back over the history, I go back over the x-rays, I go back over the results…and I learn.”