In the middle of this past week, I had the type of learning experience that I have a feeling I will miss during residency. You see, my peers and I have all come to realize that, as medical students, we have the unique privilege of being able to spend ample time with each of the patients we see, which is not necessarily the case as a resident or staff. As such, we have the opportunity to learn from our patients, by speaking to them about all sorts of things that may not be directly relevant to the encounter at hand.

In this specific example, I was in cardiology clinic, seeing a young man who had suffered a myocardial infarction a few years ago. He explained that he had been a heavy smoker in the past, and had actually managed to quit before he first started experiencing chest pain. As a CC4 who will be starting a residency in family medicine next year, smoking cessation is a topic that will be very relevant to me, and so I took this opportunity to ask him about his experience. What ensued was a long conversation about the factors that both helped and hindered his efforts to quit smoking, as well as advice for me to take forward into my future practice.

Unfortunately, I suspect that experiences like this will be few and far between as a resident and staff physician. With time and efficiency being such valuable factors in a family medicine practice, it will become harder to allow myself to take the extra time required for this type of patient-focused learning. Instead, I understand that my learning style will have to be modified in order to adapt to the changes that await me in residency. I guess I will just have to wait and see what works best for me in the coming years.

-AS