Respect

My thoughts this week have all been about respect.

Throughout my entire life I've been more or less aware of being respectful, and have come to the conclusion that every person deserves respect until proven otherwise - so I always listen carefully when addressed, and always seriously consider how my actions affect others. Most of the time this philosophy works out just fine, and I have meaningful conversations with others. Yet now I have been thrust into a professional world where the hierarchies are becoming more and more defined, and I fear that the day will come when I have to sacrifice being exceedingly respectful so that I can (conceivably) seek the truth or effect the very best patient care. (One very important message here is that I know I am not infallible, and I hope that I can be humble and remain acutely aware of my limitations, and dependence on the expertise of others.)

Example: Enter histology lab. We have a replacement instructor because Dr. Ochs is out giving a lecture to the second year med students. Our group gets started and we're chugging along until Dr. X (I'm not naming him because the point is not to call out specific people) comes by to talk to us about the optic nerve as it exits the eyeball. I will try to spare you the details, but basically we got to talking about how the area where the optic nerve leaves the retina (back of the eyeball) is the cause of the blind spot because we have no sensory cells located there (to make room for the nerve). Dr. X points out that this spot is called the 'fovea', which immediately sends up red flags in the back of my head, because the 'fovea', as I have learned it, is actually the area of the retina that contains the most sensory cells, and is why the center of our visual field allows us to read and see really well. Quite the opposite of a blind spot, the fovea is like our 'seeing spot'. Responding to Dr. X, I voiced my concern in a very non-confrontational way (with the hopes of allowing him to reconsider what he had said), I said, "Oh, hmm, that's odd. I thought the fovea was the center with the highest concentration of photoreceptors, and not the blind spot?" At this point, I can faithfully say that Dr. Ochs (and many other Penn faculty) would have consulted the internet in pursuit of the truth, if they disagreed with me. Dr. X, however, maintained his erroneous statement by repeating it to me a number of times and as a result I felt helpless, like I couldn't respond - like it might be too confrontational, or 'punk-like' of me to maintain my point. Plus, I was starting to doubt a very fundamental fact in my brain, because 'if this professor claims otherwise, I must be wrong...' So I said nothing and tried to agree with him.

I went home that day and looked up the fovea. I re-confirmed that I was correct, and then sat there with a bad feeling in my stomach. Even though this was a debate about a very inconsequential fact in the lab, and shouldn't bother me much, I wonder if similar situations will occur later in life when there's more on the line. The imbalance of power and overall knowledge between student and teacher may inevitably cause me to bite my tongue when I know the correct answer. In the previous situation, an attitude of (perhaps excessive) respect kept me from speaking my mind - I expect my professors to be correct, yet I had learned something that contradicts them. I have not yet found a resolution to this kind of problem, but in looking back on this experience I think that one thing I could have done to mediate the problem was to innocently suggest to check the internet to 'further my understanding of the retina'. That way, Dr. X will realize his error and (hopefully) not feel like I'm calling him out. It's not the best resolution, but at least we can be on the same page at that point.

Clearly I have a lot more to think about when it comes to disagreeing with professors and mentors.

Switching gears, I want to talk about respect for the dead. We started anatomy on Monday of this week, and that obviously set in motion a number of poignant topics to think about. As we cut into our cadavers for the first time, I inevitably started thinking about the man who gave up his body for science so that we could learn. It's amazing how important his donation is, and interesting to think about how we, as students, have to rationalize the fact that we are poking around inside the body of a 90+ year-old man who had a rich and full life. This is a man who lived through the Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam, The Cold War, and many other important 20th century events. On our table lies the body of a man who might have an extensive family in which he was the patriarch, or he may have lived alone. He might have been rich or poor, liberal or conservative, religious or atheist. He has lived an infinite number of possible lives that I will never know about. Instead I know him as the cadaver - and by viewing him as a cadaver it is much easier to dissect his body because we distance ourselves from his humanity. But that is not really how we should do things, we should remember his sacrifice and praise the life he lived, lest we become totally desensitized to the reality of anatomy lab, that these cadavers come from real people. I don't know how I can fully appreciate this man's life, but as a sign of respect to him and anyone who knew him, I want to end this post by saying that I will be eternally grateful for his amazing and selfless donation every day I come into anatomy lab. Every day I will remember to thank him for letting me learn his anatomy. I can guarantee this kind of respect and wholeheartedly feel it for the rest of my life as I continue developing my professional career.