Boring patients

One morning when I was a medical student on inpatient pediatrics, there were two admissions from the night before and I was told to pick up one of them.

One of the patients was a little girl who had some "interesting" disease, something rare that I might never see again.

One of the patients was a ten year old boy with periorbital cellulitis.

I wanted to take the boy with periorbital cellulitis, since the girl seemed more complicated and I wasn't interested in pediatrics. But the chief said to me, "Why don't you take the girl. She's very interesting."

"I'd rather take the boy," I said. "Isn't that something I'm more likely to see again in the future, so it's more relevant?"

"Fine," she huffed. "You take the boring periorbital cellulitis and I'll give the interesting patient to someone else."

Of course, it later turned out the boy had a brain abscess and became a much more "interesting" patient, unfortunately.

Regardless, I don't agree with the practice of finding "interesting" patients for medical students. I feel like interesting patients are great for attendings who see tons of patients and experienced residents, but for med students and new residents, even the bread and butter stuff is interesting because they've seen so little. Plus it's important for them to learn to treat bread and butter stuff, not rare diseases that they'll likely never see again.

For example: Say you have a med student on the renal service. Is it more important that they learn to manage a "boring" patient with diabetic nephropathy, a common disease that will be relevant in the future in almost any specialty, or an "interesting" patient with diabetes insipidus, a disease most doctors never or rarely see.

I mean, is the purpose of medical school to train students or to entertain them?

(Answer: Neither. It's to learn to pick up residents' drycleaning.)