Sharpen your ax

 

Recently, I had a trauma call at my scenic little hospital in Maine. “Bleeding leg wound, Dr, Crosslin. We’ve got pressure on it. Come soon.” During my jog across the parking lot to the ER, I drifted into my residency mantra and started reciting the ABCs of trauma care:

Airway, Breathing, CT scan.

Airway, Breathing, C-spine collar.

Airway, Breathing, Consult with ortho.



Okay, so it’s been a while. Four years doesn’t seem like a long time, but that little span serves up a lot of change. You settle into a routine in your isolated, bucolic New England coastal town, where most trauma is related to hauling up lobster crates and having Massachusetts drivers scare the moxie out of locals in the crosswalks, and you forget about the hundreds of Level 1 traumas you managed over 5 years in Boston. The drilled-down, rapid sequence of the primary and secondary surveys gets lost, if just for a moment. Your confident swagger is replaced with a measured, humble shuffle into Trauma Bay 1. Do I scan the leg now? Did I feel for pulses in the foot? Wait, where do the major vessels branch again?

Thankfully, it’s like riding a bike (except the trauma bike is a Kawasaki Ninja burning it at 250 mph down a Maine country back road, without a helmet). Once I knocked away the cobwebs, my confidence came back, and things went smooth as silk. I even did a thoroughly AMPLE interview, enough so to find out the wound was caused by a wood ax that slipped after contact (details changed to protect the innocent!). “It was stupid, Doctor. I got lazy and didn’t sharpen it. The only thing more dangerous than a sharp ax is a dull one.”

After addressing the issue at hand (or in this case, at foot), I kept thinking about the woodsman’s statement. I reflected on how I felt when I entered the trauma bay. Had I been doing enough to keep my own mental tools sharp? Well, actually, no. When did things slip just enough to allow hesitation and a bit of doubt to creep in? Probably sooner than I would care to admit. I certainly don’t think it took all of these 4 years for it to happen.

There has been some discussion of late surrounding the changes to maintenance of certification requirements from the American Board of Surgery. As with anything in surgery, we all need a chance to grumble about how things were better in the good old days. But then we grudgingly have to acknowledge that maybe – just maybe – the new approach makes some sense.

Did anyone really enjoy reporting on a 3-year cycle and taking a high-stakes, nausea-inducing exam every 10 years? I certainly wasn’t looking forward to reporting in this year about my “progress,” especially given how dull I seem to have become in so many subcategories just 4 years after graduation. But reporting every 5 years? That appeals to my inner slacker. Having a more-frequent-but-way-less-stressful examination that can be tailored to my practice? Yes, I’ll give that a shot.

It’s no secret we all are driven to care more about the things we enjoy doing, and educational science has established, quite firmly, the increased likelihood of concrete learning in higher numbers of loosely related fields when the primary subject is of particular interest to the learner. Elementary school teachers implemented that particular tidbit a long time ago. For me, the drive to excel leads me to the oncology, endocrine, and complex hernia reconstruction arenas. I do not pretend to be the world’s authority on trauma surgery, or anorectal surgery, or vascular surgery. I leave that expertise to others I secretly have judged to be far more pathological than myself. But I would be willing to glean more from reviewing those particular subjects if the overall focus is geared toward improving my knowledge and skill in cancer surgery.

In this ultramodern era, when the compendium of medical and surgical knowledge infinitely outpaces our ability to provide “one-stop shopping” services, perhaps it is time we accept the limitations of our interests and our abilities as part of the natural, beneficial evolution of good medical practice. The College’s willingness to work with the ABS to address the hot-button issue of continuing education in an interactive, relevant, timely manner should be a major point of pride. Rather than clinging to the dull ways of the past, I think we all are going to benefit from carrying a collectively sharper ax.

Dr. Crosslin is a general surgeon practicing in Rockport, Maine.

 

Recently, I had a trauma call at my scenic little hospital in Maine. “Bleeding leg wound, Dr, Crosslin. We’ve got pressure on it. Come soon.” During my jog across the parking lot to the ER, I drifted into my residency mantra and started reciting the ABCs of trauma care:

Airway, Breathing, CT scan.

Airway, Breathing, C-spine collar.

Airway, Breathing, Consult with ortho.



Okay, so it’s been a while. Four years doesn’t seem like a long time, but that little span serves up a lot of change. You settle into a routine in your isolated, bucolic New England coastal town, where most trauma is related to hauling up lobster crates and having Massachusetts drivers scare the moxie out of locals in the crosswalks, and you forget about the hundreds of Level 1 traumas you managed over 5 years in Boston. The drilled-down, rapid sequence of the primary and secondary surveys gets lost, if just for a moment. Your confident swagger is replaced with a measured, humble shuffle into Trauma Bay 1. Do I scan the leg now? Did I feel for pulses in the foot? Wait, where do the major vessels branch again?

Thankfully, it’s like riding a bike (except the trauma bike is a Kawasaki Ninja burning it at 250 mph down a Maine country back road, without a helmet). Once I knocked away the cobwebs, my confidence came back, and things went smooth as silk. I even did a thoroughly AMPLE interview, enough so to find out the wound was caused by a wood ax that slipped after contact (details changed to protect the innocent!). “It was stupid, Doctor. I got lazy and didn’t sharpen it. The only thing more dangerous than a sharp ax is a dull one.”

After addressing the issue at hand (or in this case, at foot), I kept thinking about the woodsman’s statement. I reflected on how I felt when I entered the trauma bay. Had I been doing enough to keep my own mental tools sharp? Well, actually, no. When did things slip just enough to allow hesitation and a bit of doubt to creep in? Probably sooner than I would care to admit. I certainly don’t think it took all of these 4 years for it to happen.

There has been some discussion of late surrounding the changes to maintenance of certification requirements from the American Board of Surgery. As with anything in surgery, we all need a chance to grumble about how things were better in the good old days. But then we grudgingly have to acknowledge that maybe – just maybe – the new approach makes some sense.

Did anyone really enjoy reporting on a 3-year cycle and taking a high-stakes, nausea-inducing exam every 10 years? I certainly wasn’t looking forward to reporting in this year about my “progress,” especially given how dull I seem to have become in so many subcategories just 4 years after graduation. But reporting every 5 years? That appeals to my inner slacker. Having a more-frequent-but-way-less-stressful examination that can be tailored to my practice? Yes, I’ll give that a shot.

It’s no secret we all are driven to care more about the things we enjoy doing, and educational science has established, quite firmly, the increased likelihood of concrete learning in higher numbers of loosely related fields when the primary subject is of particular interest to the learner. Elementary school teachers implemented that particular tidbit a long time ago. For me, the drive to excel leads me to the oncology, endocrine, and complex hernia reconstruction arenas. I do not pretend to be the world’s authority on trauma surgery, or anorectal surgery, or vascular surgery. I leave that expertise to others I secretly have judged to be far more pathological than myself. But I would be willing to glean more from reviewing those particular subjects if the overall focus is geared toward improving my knowledge and skill in cancer surgery.

In this ultramodern era, when the compendium of medical and surgical knowledge infinitely outpaces our ability to provide “one-stop shopping” services, perhaps it is time we accept the limitations of our interests and our abilities as part of the natural, beneficial evolution of good medical practice. The College’s willingness to work with the ABS to address the hot-button issue of continuing education in an interactive, relevant, timely manner should be a major point of pride. Rather than clinging to the dull ways of the past, I think we all are going to benefit from carrying a collectively sharper ax.

Dr. Crosslin is a general surgeon practicing in Rockport, Maine.

 

Recently, I had a trauma call at my scenic little hospital in Maine. “Bleeding leg wound, Dr, Crosslin. We’ve got pressure on it. Come soon.” During my jog across the parking lot to the ER, I drifted into my residency mantra and started reciting the ABCs of trauma care:

Airway, Breathing, CT scan.

Airway, Breathing, C-spine collar.

Airway, Breathing, Consult with ortho.



Okay, so it’s been a while. Four years doesn’t seem like a long time, but that little span serves up a lot of change. You settle into a routine in your isolated, bucolic New England coastal town, where most trauma is related to hauling up lobster crates and having Massachusetts drivers scare the moxie out of locals in the crosswalks, and you forget about the hundreds of Level 1 traumas you managed over 5 years in Boston. The drilled-down, rapid sequence of the primary and secondary surveys gets lost, if just for a moment. Your confident swagger is replaced with a measured, humble shuffle into Trauma Bay 1. Do I scan the leg now? Did I feel for pulses in the foot? Wait, where do the major vessels branch again?

Thankfully, it’s like riding a bike (except the trauma bike is a Kawasaki Ninja burning it at 250 mph down a Maine country back road, without a helmet). Once I knocked away the cobwebs, my confidence came back, and things went smooth as silk. I even did a thoroughly AMPLE interview, enough so to find out the wound was caused by a wood ax that slipped after contact (details changed to protect the innocent!). “It was stupid, Doctor. I got lazy and didn’t sharpen it. The only thing more dangerous than a sharp ax is a dull one.”

After addressing the issue at hand (or in this case, at foot), I kept thinking about the woodsman’s statement. I reflected on how I felt when I entered the trauma bay. Had I been doing enough to keep my own mental tools sharp? Well, actually, no. When did things slip just enough to allow hesitation and a bit of doubt to creep in? Probably sooner than I would care to admit. I certainly don’t think it took all of these 4 years for it to happen.

There has been some discussion of late surrounding the changes to maintenance of certification requirements from the American Board of Surgery. As with anything in surgery, we all need a chance to grumble about how things were better in the good old days. But then we grudgingly have to acknowledge that maybe – just maybe – the new approach makes some sense.

Did anyone really enjoy reporting on a 3-year cycle and taking a high-stakes, nausea-inducing exam every 10 years? I certainly wasn’t looking forward to reporting in this year about my “progress,” especially given how dull I seem to have become in so many subcategories just 4 years after graduation. But reporting every 5 years? That appeals to my inner slacker. Having a more-frequent-but-way-less-stressful examination that can be tailored to my practice? Yes, I’ll give that a shot.

It’s no secret we all are driven to care more about the things we enjoy doing, and educational science has established, quite firmly, the increased likelihood of concrete learning in higher numbers of loosely related fields when the primary subject is of particular interest to the learner. Elementary school teachers implemented that particular tidbit a long time ago. For me, the drive to excel leads me to the oncology, endocrine, and complex hernia reconstruction arenas. I do not pretend to be the world’s authority on trauma surgery, or anorectal surgery, or vascular surgery. I leave that expertise to others I secretly have judged to be far more pathological than myself. But I would be willing to glean more from reviewing those particular subjects if the overall focus is geared toward improving my knowledge and skill in cancer surgery.

In this ultramodern era, when the compendium of medical and surgical knowledge infinitely outpaces our ability to provide “one-stop shopping” services, perhaps it is time we accept the limitations of our interests and our abilities as part of the natural, beneficial evolution of good medical practice. The College’s willingness to work with the ABS to address the hot-button issue of continuing education in an interactive, relevant, timely manner should be a major point of pride. Rather than clinging to the dull ways of the past, I think we all are going to benefit from carrying a collectively sharper ax.

Dr. Crosslin is a general surgeon practicing in Rockport, Maine.