George Washington University medical student demonstrates his auscultory (stethoscope) skills to a student nurse. Paul Goldfinger with the surprise photo c. 1966. Washington DC., ©. Re-post
ASTRUD GILBERTO offers some sound advice: “Never trust your heart to a medical student”
Bob was one of our 4 man group that rotated through the clinical years together. He and I were from Jersey. The other two were from Utah and Pennsylvania. Although our medical school was especially known for ob-gyn and surgery, Bob went on to become a nephrologist.
My candid shot caught him playing doctor with a lovely nursing student. But he had to practice on somebody. How else could he learn what normal lungs sound like?
I used to go to a famous cardiology conference at Georgetown Medical School. Proctor Harvey, the master of cardiac auscultation, told how one of their students couldn’t get the normal heart sounds straight. Harvey asked the student whom he was practicing on. The student said it was his wife, so Harvey had him bring the wife in for a cardiac exam, and she turned out to have a narrowed mitral valve. No wonder the student couldn’t “get” the “normal” heart sounds.
So Ted—practice makes perfect.
Paul, I will be a gentleman and not ask what this Dr’s speciality was going to be, but it doesn’t look like pulmonary