Pages

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Boundary

I spend the entire day today with my cousin and his friends tonight. He came to Melbourne last week and due to exam, I'm not able to bring him around but at least, he managed to enjoy his time here at Melbourne with his friends.

In the middle of the dinner, one of his friends asked me that since I'm a medical student, I must have seen every part of human body. I thoughtlessly said that, we even saw dead people and cut them up....They managed to stop me before I completed my own sentence.

Then I realised my mistake. As a medical student, we have somehow managed to be a bit different from non-medical people.

It is normal for medical students to discuss human anatomy in front of food. Breakfast, lunch, dinner...we can nonchalantly talk about fascia, colon, small bowel, liver, nerve, brain, drugs and anything that we have learned so far. We can even talk about DRE while having lunch at the same time. Some medical students can even talk about food while cutting up cadaver (dead people)!

We forget the boundary that existed before we became medical students. Sometimes we are forgetting that non-medical people will find it disgusting or outrageous to casually talk about dead people. We can unconsciously use medical jargon while seeing patients and sometimes we hopelessly, forget the appropriate layman's term due to long exposure to medical vocabulary.

Moral of the story: I should meet more people outside medicine biggrin.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

at least you don't have to cry "i see dead people" under your blankets. ehehehe

mommy said...

don't talk to me bout blood..dead people or i'll SCREAAAMMMM!!!

Hafiz said...

@mosh, this reminds me of 'Sixth Sense'.

@princess, i will try my best no talk about blood but we are used to see blood.