It was examination time today in UNE's medical school and, like this time last year, I was asked to be a patient for medical students exhibiting their skills in diagnosis. I was asked to do this because of my cardiac condition and installed defibrillator. Anyway I agreed to donate my body for them purpose, though I'd be a lot less receptive to the idea if the students were practising autopsies!
There wasn't too much to my task. A doctor had an 8am briefing session explaining what I and the students had to do. Then 6 students came into the room one by one at 25 minute intervals and were told that I was (a) 68 years old (well not quite, 67 and 364 days) and (b) I had a cardiac condition. They then had to diagnose as much about me as possible from a cardio-vascular angle: blood pressure, heart-beat, pulse, condition of heart and other organs (without opening me up), state of eyes and mouth, condition of arms and legs, chest soundings, and so on. I got the impression that bed-side manner was also being assessed along with ability to use the instrumentation quickly.
The medical school supplied me with a highish bed on which I had to rotate position at the students' requests and the bed could be tilted as needed. So I was prodded and poked for something like 3 hours. I was wearing just jeans a T-shirt and provocatively I wore the one I bought in Helsinki with the hero of the Finnish epic poem (the Kalevala) Kullervo riding a motorbike wearing a helmet with horns on it. Anyway, the students didn't have enough time to work out if really am a bikie and anyway the T-shirt was mostly off as they worked around my torso.
After each investigation the student involved was asked to comment on my condition to the doctor doing the assessment. I could overhear some of the discussion and some was quite accurate. Two students, however, didn't manage to notice my defibrillator! During this stage I was fortunately able to read my Kindle and in particular Stanislslav Lem's amazing 1964 book Summa Technologiae - a futuristic look at the world and the forces, scientific and social, driving it. He intended it to be a counter-point to Aquinas' Summa Theoligica written in 1265-74 some 700 years earlier. So, I learned much this morning earlier, like in around 4500 AD the energy use by humans on this planet is likely to reach 1/10,000 of the energy emission of the sun! But by then we'll be racing around the solar system and its neighbours in rockets waited on be legions of robots.
AS
There wasn't too much to my task. A doctor had an 8am briefing session explaining what I and the students had to do. Then 6 students came into the room one by one at 25 minute intervals and were told that I was (a) 68 years old (well not quite, 67 and 364 days) and (b) I had a cardiac condition. They then had to diagnose as much about me as possible from a cardio-vascular angle: blood pressure, heart-beat, pulse, condition of heart and other organs (without opening me up), state of eyes and mouth, condition of arms and legs, chest soundings, and so on. I got the impression that bed-side manner was also being assessed along with ability to use the instrumentation quickly.
The medical school supplied me with a highish bed on which I had to rotate position at the students' requests and the bed could be tilted as needed. So I was prodded and poked for something like 3 hours. I was wearing just jeans a T-shirt and provocatively I wore the one I bought in Helsinki with the hero of the Finnish epic poem (the Kalevala) Kullervo riding a motorbike wearing a helmet with horns on it. Anyway, the students didn't have enough time to work out if really am a bikie and anyway the T-shirt was mostly off as they worked around my torso.
After each investigation the student involved was asked to comment on my condition to the doctor doing the assessment. I could overhear some of the discussion and some was quite accurate. Two students, however, didn't manage to notice my defibrillator! During this stage I was fortunately able to read my Kindle and in particular Stanislslav Lem's amazing 1964 book Summa Technologiae - a futuristic look at the world and the forces, scientific and social, driving it. He intended it to be a counter-point to Aquinas' Summa Theoligica written in 1265-74 some 700 years earlier. So, I learned much this morning earlier, like in around 4500 AD the energy use by humans on this planet is likely to reach 1/10,000 of the energy emission of the sun! But by then we'll be racing around the solar system and its neighbours in rockets waited on be legions of robots.
AS
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