From an Observer

I teach Virology to second-year medical students. In my job as an educator, I try to present information my students will need to function as competent doctors. But at times I wonder if I can determine what they need to know. I often ask myself if I include information truly important or only of interest to basic scientists like myself. When I teach Virology, for instance, I know that for my students to understand viral replication they must understand macromolecular synthesis. I am comfortable teaching that material. But how much of that do they need to know? What will they use in practice? Because I am not a physician, to some degree I am unable to answer.

Another aspect that troubles me about teaching medical students is lecturing on the clinical manifestations of viral diseases. That's where I am a fish out of water. For me, these diseases are merely descriptions in a book. They have no faces. It troubles me that I lecture on serious illnesses about which I have only read. How can I teach what I have never seen? My own children have not had chickenpox, and although I have, I did not observe the three types of lesions present simultaneously on my skin. Yet I teach it. I teach a lot about AIDS when I have no experiential knowledge of this disease.

For some time I had considered a way to remedy this deficiency. I wrote to an infectious disease specialist, requesting to join him on rounds for a few weeks. But then I set the letter aside. What was I afraid of? Doctors for one thing. I knew what they were really like. Physicians refer to patients by their diseases, not by their names. They are arrogant and abusive to residents on their service. What …