ACADEMIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
Confessions of Dr. Boomer Mary Claire O’Brien, MD FAAEM
We simply do not understand one another. Because—for us Boomer Doctors, medicine is not like anything we have ever seen before.
D
ear Dr. Boomer,
, how do you tell In academic medicine s that medicine your senior colleague need to change is changing, and they inisce about the with it? They just rem I encourage my “old days.” How can flexible, without older colleagues to be ticking them off? “Best,” ial Frustrated Dr. Millenn
The electronic medical record? We remember carbon paper, mimeograph machines, and microfilm. Typewriters. White out. Books! We remember going to the medical library and hoping there was a copy of Sir Robert Muir’s Pathology—all 1120 pages of it. As students we carried fat blue plastic notebooks in the pockets of our short white cotton coats. They were full of lists: the causes of heart failure, the names of all the bacteria with all their Gram stains, the procedure for how to do a Gram stain, algorithms for cardiac arrest, a diagram of how to put down a stomach lavage tube, the causes of hyponatremia. Dr. Millennial, you should be so proud of me! When I hear “hyponatremia” these days, I just take out my phone and type it into Google! I get 12,840,000 results in 0.56 seconds. Who needs to memorize? Did you know that there are more than 60,000 drugs in the current United States Pharmacopeia? If I come across a new medication, I just “google” it. What, you don’t trust google for medical information? I thought that was your mantra, “If it’s on the internet, it must be accurate.” Just teasing, Dr. Millennial. Remember what my Boomer colleague Patrick says, “You find out who the real neurologists are when the electricity goes out.” Yes, Dr. Millennial, I am a Luddite. But I do not need an app to tell me what a heart murmur sounds like or how to use my clinical gestalt. You young folks will find out who the real doctors are, when the technology is not working! Old Dr. Boomer has a few confessions to make.
Dear Dr. Millennial, You can’t! We are th e most experienced physicians in this practice paradigm! We have so cks older than you whippersnappers . You can’t tell us anything. If there were a better way of doing things, we would have told you! *Signed,* Dr. Boomer P.S. Did you just call me
old?
I like you. You are so clever with technology! That fancy ultrasound machine of yours has revolutionized emergency medicine. Every time I figure out how to turn the dang machine on, you are making a podcast about a new indication. A podcast—or was it a blog or a Reddit? Who cares! No more DPLs! No more culdocenteses! No blind central lines! Gee, you’re even scanning eyeballs these days. Wonders never cease with you, Dr. Millennial. You are innovative. You mention flexibility. The reason we Boomers prefer to do things the tried and true way is that we earned our wrinkles making bad mistakes. We hope you will avoid those same blunders by listening to our fascinating anecdotes. Yes, that means you have to stand still for 10 seconds. OK, 10 minutes. We have a lifetime of knowledge to share with you—not because we are smarter, but because we have been burnt, Dr. Millennial. We are also trying to build a relationship with you, one that does not involve social >>
The reason we Boomers prefer to do things the tried and true way is that we earned our wrinkles making bad mistakes. COMMON SENSE MAY/JUNE 2023
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