The first pass effect

You might find this stupid but trust me its true. I have witnessed it among a huge bunch of my colleagues and fellow medical students and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

I call the phenomenon the first pass effect. Now what exactly am I talking about?

It is common practice in a medical college to admit a huge number of students. This number can vary from 100- 250. Considering the fact that our learning is mostly along with the clinical departments in the wards and at the bed side of the sick patients, it is not possible for the entire herd to storm in.
We are hence split into multiple groups as we go for each posting .
So some of us go for surgery and some for medicine and we swap after a while.

Interesting conversations happen when the groups meet.

The ones in surgery love the art of it. They relish the air of coolness a surgeon possesses and more precisely the sense of supremacy. They find solace in being able to do procedures. What excites a medical student even more is the short and crisp history taking involved and how simplified and clear cut management is. It's sometimes like a quick response to ones problems.

Now the ones in medicine hate all of this. They like the overload of brains involved in diagnosing conditions. They love the ward work. They love not making those incisions and sutures.

These guys feel that the surgeons don't think much. The surgeons feel that these guys only keep thinking!

The ones in surgery eventually hate it when they go to medicine and the reverse hold true. Well of course there are exceptions but then the first pass effect holds true.

It goes like this:

'A medical student almost always likes the first posting he goes to in a rotation irrespective of past desires and the complexity of it.'

Starting my  surgery posting tomorrow so.....