Who Rescues the Rescuers?

What is your job as a doctor? Is it to know anatomy, biochemistry, pathology and pharmacology? Sure. However, it is more than just that, we share a very unique burden with law enforcement and other emergency personnel. Except for a small number of specialties, you will often be treating patients when they are very ill. It is our job to treat a whole person; part of that burden is treating their emotions. Unfortunately, when you are dealing with the most painful aspects of the human condition it is hard not to let it affect you personally.

Medical school attracts highly motivated, type A personalities who are used to being a person who is depended upon. Medical training also seems to impress upon students a somewhat casual approach to death and pain, beginning with cadaver dissection and moving on through clinical rotations. During the clinical years a student or resident can feel like showing any perceived weakness might hurt their grade or change how they are viewed by their mentors. Much of this problem comes from pride; the culture of physicians includes the ability to be a casual observer of these most difficult parts of life.

Home life may not be much improvement, especially if one does not have a good support system or someone else who can empathize at home. Often times it is even suggested to emergency responders not to “bring work home” with them. So imagine this scenario: you have just worked a twelve hour shift of dealing with other people’s pain, you know you have no one you can talk to about it and you know that when you leave work you have people who are depending on you to complete your responsibilities at home; it is easy to see why there is such a high prevalence of drug and alcohol abuse amongst physicians and other emergency personnel.

It is incredibly important, in my opinion, to learn early in a career how to debrief effectively. It is inevitable that at some point you will see a patient that will trouble you. They will remind you of your mother, your children, a painful situation in your past, or you may have a patient die and feel like it was your fault; something will get into your head. It is our job to be able to compartmentalize our emotions to effectively take care of our job and treat the patient at that moment. However, leaving your emotions compartmentalized will effect all of your personal relationships and in the long run is detrimental to your entire life and leads to burnout.

So who rescues the rescuers? We all do, it is our responsibility as a community to be able to recognize the signs of someone having a difficult time and to be available for them. It is our job to support the members of our teams and realize that everyone will eventually have a problem like this. It is also our job to be open enough to recognize these feelings in ourselves and seek out help instead of letting them fester because we are no use to anyone if we are broken.

“Physician, help yourself: thus you help your patient too” – Nietzsche

P = M.D.

So, first Anatomy exam in the books. Not great but also not bad. I passed and with a little cushion even, and I now know what to expect from my professors. Also, the way I graded myself may have been harsher than what the professors might, according to one of my TAs.

But I have to go back to the books because we have our second exam (Biochemistry) on Tuesday.

Back to it!

Med School, Part I

Alright. So. Things have been a little crazy over here at la casa del oso since I started medical school. I have learned alot of things already including but not limited to: 1. Anatomy is less scary than my brain made it out to be. 2. People are weird, including professors. 3. Even the most asinine-seeming lectures can turn out to be really awesome 4. Smelling like dead people sucks 5. Being around smart people again is REALLY nice. 6. Anatomy lab makes everyone hungry, which is upsetting. 7. When people compare any part of anatomy lab to food, it becomes difficult to eat that food (i.e. one of my lab partners thinks that bone saws smell like Doritos) 8. The people you least expect can make you smile when you aren't prepared. For example:

We were given a lecture on loss prevention from our head security officer, who told us in his very best Chris Rock voice:

"That one high heeled shoe you have in the back of your car, it might not be important to you...but it's important to a crackhead.
The sweater you keep in the back seat of your car, might not be important to you...but it's important to a crackhead."

But now i have to go put on my pajamas and go visit some dead people

Discussion Question

In honor of the moon landing anniversary, i pose a discussion question. When you were younger and learning about (or witnessing, for our older viewers) the lunar landing what did you think life would be like in 2010? Has life lived up to your expectations or are you still pissed off about not having a flying car?

In honor of 40 years

In honor of the brave men who traveled all those miles to prove that ours is bigger.

Thanks to the people at Cake Wrecks

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How very cool

Spear-wielding chimps snack on skewered bushbabies

17:00 22 February 2007 by Rowan Hooper
For similar stories, visit the Human Evolution Topic Guide
In a revelation that destroys yet another cherished notion of human uniqueness, wild chimpanzees have been seen living in caves and hunting bushbabies with spears. It is the first time an animal has been seen using a tool to hunt a vertebrate.

Many chimpanzees trim twigs to use for ant-dipping and termite-fishing. But a population of savannah chimps (Pan troglodytes verus) living in the Fongoli area of south-east Senegal have been seen making spears from strong sticks that they sharpen with their teeth. The average spear length is 63 centimetres (25 inches), says Jill Pruetz at Iowa State University in Ames, US, who observed the behaviour with Paco Bertolani, of the University of Cambridge, UK.

And the method of procuring food with these tools is not simply extractive, as it is when harvesting insects. It is far more aggressive. They use the spears to hunt one of the cutest primates in Africa: bushbabies (Galago senegalensis).

Bushbabies are nocturnal and curl up in hollows in trees during the day. If disturbed during their slumbers - if their nest cavity is broken open, for example - they rapidly scamper away. It appears that the chimps have learnt a grisly method of slowing them down.

Take a look at the chimps in action, in these three videos

Cave life

Chimps were observed thrusting their spears into hollow trunks and branches with enough force to injure anything inside the holes, Pruetz's research team says. The chimps used a "power grip" and made multiple downward stabs - much the same way as a human might wield a dagger.

Ten different chimps in the population were observed to perform this behaviour in 22 bouts. In one case the researchers saw a chimp remove a dead bush baby and eat it. Here is the chimp enjoying his grisly meal, and cleaning his small spear (5MB, Requires QuickTime).

And, in what is thought to be another first for chimps, the Fongoli population have taken up aspects of cave living. They use the the shady interiors for socialising, taking siestas and picnicking, the researchers say. Pruetz jokes that she would not be surprised if the chimps began making cave drawings.

The Fongoli chimps inhabit a mosaic savannah - patches of grass and woodland - where there are no red colobus monkeys. The absence of these monkeys, which are the favoured prey of several other chimp populations, may explain the Fongoli chimps' unique spear-hunting behaviour.

"Given the lack of opportunity, Fongoli chimps have come up with a way to get around the problem of how to get protein in their particular environment...using tools to hunt," says Pruetz.

Secret snacks

Intriguingly, the behaviour is mostly confined to females and immature chimps. Adults hunt and eat green monkeys, but males have priority over access to the meat. Pruetz suggests that Fongoli juveniles and females get around this by exploiting a niche that is relatively ignored by adult males - and spearing little bushbaby snacks for themselves.

"Immatures and females are innovative in solving the problem of feeding competition," she says.

Chimps regularly seem to be discovered doing things once thought unique to humans (see Stone Age chimps were handy with a hammer). "Back to the drawing board again in terms of trying to define how humans are special," says Pruetz.

Journal reference: Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2006.12.042