Friday, April 21, 2006

The Questions "Guy"

Ok, there's one in every medical school class I'm sure. The question "guy" (or girl) is the person who can listen to someone explain something and then put their hand up to ask the person to repeat what they just said because they weren't listening. It goes something a little like this:

Professor
: In Von Willebrand disease the amount of circuling Von Willebrand Factor (VWF) is low. Because the numbers are down the function of VWF will also be low. This makes the amount of factor VIII low because it needs VWF to bind to it so it can survive in the circulation. Unbound VIII is destroyed quickly so cannot contribute to the clotting cascade.

The Question Guy
: Um, i see the term "Von Willebrand disease" in my notes, could you explain to me what Von Willebrand Disease is?

If you're not going to pay attention: a) don't come to the lecture or b) don't ask questions!

In addition, we all have the notes right infront of us that she's lecturing from... so he could have just read it.

I wonder how you got into medical school.

5 comments:

Impatient Patient said...

Ha Ha!!

I just found you on NHS Blog Doctor- glad to hear a fellow Canadian AND an med student to boot wants to keep medicare public. I am a lowly carer of someone who is going through a bad thing, and I am amzed at what I have learned over the past few years. I am occasionally a patient myself. It can be frustrating to wait, but it would be even more horrible to pay through the nose for treatment that was constantly denied by insurance companies. In Canada that can happen through various insurance company medical models. You do have the option of going through public health but that can be along wait for some things deemed not emergencies.


Have fun in med school, learn tonnes and have a great time blogging!!

Oh- and if you can enable the Blogger feature for the comments section that has the person type in a string of letters for security. It cuts down on some wicked spam.

Impatient Patient said...

Oh- and I can spell.... I was just not being very careful- LOL!

medstudentitis said...

Thanks for your encouragement and support. I for one will always practice in the public system even if we go to a two-tier system. I also think two-tier doctors should be obligated to take on a certain percentage of non-paying patients to ensure that the quality of care in the public system stays high.

Anonymous said...

Hi Medstudentitis!

I realise how ridiculous it is to post a comment 6+ months after you posted, but your description of the Questions Guy is perfect and I felt I just had to share! The Questions Guy of my year once turned up 20 minutes late to an exam-briefing lecture (this was normal for him). He missed the most important point of the lecture and failed the exam miserably - then, in the post-exam lecture, put up his hand and said, "Um, I was just wondering why you changed the format of the exam and didn't even tell us?" Priceless. Absolutely.

Anyway, I promise if I ever comment in future, I'll do it in a more appropriate place. Congrats on the palpable liver (and the new baby, whoever she belongs to).

Tiny Shrink said...

Another late comment. I'm a med student in the US, in Texas. We, too have "Question Guy". We also have "Rambling Question Girl"--all of her "questions" are at least 5 minutes long, taking so long to ask that the questionee has long since forgotten what she was asking.