Volume 7 Issue 3 March, 2017
If you want to use your brain..
It was my first day in medical ward as MBBS student. Dr. Bisht, professor of medicine, JIPMER, Pondicherry, asked us about what we want to specialise after MBBS. All the boys wanted to be surgeons. All the girls wanted to be gynecologists except me who wanted to be a physician.
His next question to us, “Which is the most important part of a stethoscope?” Though each one said chest piece, ear piece, etc., he told that it is a distance between the two ear pieces. Meaning our brain, he said only Saranya will use her brain. The surgeons and gynecologist need not use their brain since they open up and see what is wrong and correct it or cut and throw it. Only physicians using their brains, diagnose with what they see, touch, tap and hear. They don’t
cut open the chest wall to see what is wrong with the lungs or heart.
Years later he came as DGHS to NIMHANS, Bengaluru, for a governing council meeting. When I met him, he remembered me and said, “You are going to use your brain more than a physician since you have joined D.P.M.” Even without hearing with stethoscope, tapping with fingers, you are going to diagnose with knowledge kept inside your brain.
Till today I am enjoying using my brain to the maximum. The real art of medicine is psychiatry.
Attaching video link of “Significance of physical examination and talking” by Dr.Abraham Verghese.
Bengaluru, dr.saranya@gmail.com
