Oh, guide me.

Today's my last day on pediatrics.

I have to say, I owe Paeds a great deal. For some reason, I feel more attached or even aware of much more things in practical way while I was practicing it.

Today too, one of our teacher told us, that he once encounter a pneumothorax but completely unaware of it and send the patient to x-ray on feet. No pathological sound heard. The main symptom was chest pain in which is atypical sign for pneumothorax.

Then he said, the radiologist phoned him and scolded him for not catching that early. Lucky that he got the boy just in time. My doctor explained to the radiologist the whole picture but of course in times like that, they needed someone to be held responsible.

No one could have seen it coming. In medicine, things can change in split second. Walk in with chest pain, there might be an aortic dissection tearing up. Simple headache, might be a heads up for hemorrhagic stroke for that matter. This boy was walking side by side with his mother not knowing that his lung was collapsing.

The crazy part is, there will be someone to be charge responsible.

Young,nervous fresh-out-of-medical-school-graduates are one of the odds.

He told us too, that after that, he would always think of pneumothorax as the one of the potent possible differential even when presenting with atypical symptoms. And that he wouldn't make such mistakes anymore.

That is one episode where we can pull the "oh, no one could have seen it coming" line, but the guilt we carry is already bombardingly indescribable, imagine have to be held account for a mere neglect or juvenile inexperience.

Learning from mistakes are just the way we progress, both as a student and human being. But at this point I might want to realize that the many mistakes i am about to make involve another human being's life at stakes.

How to bypass these whole thing?I'm afraid such thing doesn't exist.

"We are left with a choice. Either let the guilt throw you back into the behavior that got you into trouble in the first place, or learn from the guilt and do your best to move on."

G.A

Till then.

+_+