Medical student madness
Phil Brooks owns up to the peculiar character traits he has developed as a medical student
Medicine is guilty of turning people into obsessive-compulsives. I find myself watching television dramas such as ER, which is quite realistic, Casualty, which is reasonably realistic, and Chicago Hope, where realism is not really on the agenda, and picking the respective episodes to pieces in a compulsive fashion. I point out, much to the annoyance of my three non-medical housemates, every tiny error. If the stethoscope is inserted into the ear canal the wrong way Sarah, Kate, and Catherine have to know about it. Their lives may depend on it! I often wonder if this obsessionality can be found in other professions. Do nurses sit of an evening in front of Peak Practice and curse the district nurse as she incorrectly bandages a leg ulcer? Do publicans and barmaids wince as the EastEnders' cockney charmer, Barbara Windsor, pulls a cloudy pint of bitter behind the bar in the Old Vic? I think not. It is medicine, and medicine alone, that confers such peculiar and compulsive behaviour patterns on its subjects.
Aetiology of dementia
I'm sure studying medicine is involved somewhere in the aetiology of dementia. While revising for exams or cramming for tutorials I find myself doing the most bizarre things. I walk to the local shop wearing someone else's shoes, with my coat on over my pyjamas, on my quest for nicotine and chocolate. If, "I'm a medical student" wasn't seen as a valid excuse to give to the very understanding shopkeeper, I would have been sectioned a long time ago. I have also come to realise that I leave my textbooks, notes, and medical paraphernalia in the most random of places. Many a time, my understanding housemates have shifted my copy of Kumar and Clark from the toilet or have told me, as I run around the house like a headless chicken in search of my white coat, that I am in fact wearing it.
I am also quite positive that medicine makes you hallucinate. I remember sitting on a train back from London, opposite a man with very prominent veins on his forearm and the dorsum of his hand. I was particularly tired--well, more like hungover--and with the gentle rocking of the train, my eyes began to play little tricks on me. I could see these massive cable-like veins and was imagining how satisfying it would be to insert quite large gauge cannulas into them. I could visualise the tourniquet, the little brown cap on the cannula and the pleasing flashback of blood one sees at the hilt. A loud announcement over the Tannoy that had something to do with sandwiches at Wolverhampton quickly roused me from my hallucination, and I continued on my journey with my head firmly buried in my magazine. Delusions are commonplace within the sphere of medicine too. Despite the massive amount of work I had done for A level, I firmly believed that all of my preclinical anatomy course could be revised in 36 hours. This delusion was shattered by the ensuing "borderline" viva.
But giving it all up?
Other psychiatric manifestations are frequently seen in medical schools up and down the country. Alcohol abuse, commonly seen in association with rugby, luminous coloured curry, and personality disorders--you know who you are--are just three I could name. I am seriously worried about my mental heath. I am considering packing in medicine altogether and becoming cabin-crew for Virgin Atlantic, an inexplicable childhood dream, or possibly joining the circus. Actually, on reflection, I think I'll stick with medicine; besides, I get really bad air sickness, and I look appalling in a leotard.
Phil Brooks, fourth year medical student, University of Leicester
studentBMJ 2000;08:175-216 June ISSN 0966-6494
