I am a big fan of Atul Gawande. Any discomfort we feel with his name is probably due to cultural isolation, our experience of names not including those from India and other cultures. But we are going to have to get used to new names since some of our best thinking comes from people with different cultural backgrounds.
Prof. Gawande is an important American teacher, physician and one of my favorite authors. I have read three books by him ("Complications", "Better", and "The Checklist Manifesto") and articles by him that sometimes appear in The New Yorker. I read that both of his parents, born in India, are physicians. He is on the Harvard Medical School faculty.
The New Yorker published his address to the graduating class at the Standford Medical School.
The Velluvial Matrix
Posted by Atul GawandeAtul Gawande gave the commencement speech at Stanford's School of Medicine last week. Here is what he told the graduating class.
Many of you have worked for four solid years—or five, or six, or nine—and we are here to declare that, as of today, you officially know enough stuff to be called a graduate of the Stanford School of Medicine. You are Doctors of Medicine, Doctors of Philosophy, Masters of Science. It's been certified. Each of you is now an expert. Congratulations.
So why—in your heart of hearts—do you not quite feel that way?
The experience of a medical and scientific education is transformational. It is like moving to a new country. At first, you don't know the language, let alone the customs and concepts. But then, almost imperceptibly, that changes. Half the words you now routinely use you did not know existed when you started: words like arterial-blood gas, nasogastric tube, microarray, logistic regression, NMDA receptor, velluvial matrix.
O.K., I made that last one up. But the velluvial matrix sounds like something you should know about, doesn't it? And that's the problem. I will let you in on a little secret. You never stop wondering if there is a velluvial matrix you should know about.
Since I graduated from medical school, my family and friends have had their share of medical issues, just as you and your family will. And, inevitably, they turn to the medical graduate in the house for advice and explanation.
I remember one time when a friend came with a question. "You're a doctor now," he said. "So tell me: where exactly is the solar plexus?"
I was stumped. The information was not anywhere in the textbooks.
"I don't know," I finally confessed.
"What kind of doctor are you?" he said.
I didn't feel much better equipped when my wife had two miscarriages, or when our first child was born with part of his aorta missing, or when my daughter had a fall and dislocated her elbow, and I failed to recognize it, or when my wife tore a ligament in her wrist that I'd never heard of—her velluvial matrix, I think it was.
The rest of his address can be read here. It is not all fun and games but worth a few minutes reading.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2010/06/gawande-stanford-speech.html
