Kind: captions
Language: en
I thought that there would be very
little Choice um and uh I um made a
little announcement to the uh I made a
little announcement to the uh newly
arrived students whether anyone would be
interested only expecting a handful to
come up but in fact half the student
body uh volunteered and so literally
about 70 or you about 70 of the the
class and it really was an awful lot
just Instinct I had about 10 minutes
with each of them I did want to get a
mix of male female um I did want to get
a different backgrounds ages um uh sort
of try to reflect the student body in in
terms of the makeup so this was a little
microcosm but it was really just feeling
who would be people that would stay with
stay the course who would be willing to
hang in when things would get bad
because it's you know sooner or later
you know the the the the the thrill of
being in front of the camera wears off
in fact incredibly
quickly and um I I wanted people that
would you know that would would would
stay there and uh and I I think a lot of
it was just my instinct and sort of kind
of a gut reaction and you know I was
incredibly fortunate with the with the
seven I found and I'm and I would like
to return the uh the kind words I I
absolutely understand how difficult this
has been uh to be in front of the camera
I never if I was a medical student ever
would have volunteered um I I think and
I think they've been extraordinarily
candid and and I I really feel that it's
been a great privilege to have uh shared
just little fragment of their of their
lives over the last 20 years Paula given
the response to that's for me the given
the response to doctor's Diaries and the
rest of the series um but also
considering the resources that were
required to make this series um do you
think Nova would produce another
long-term type of project like this uh
times have changed in television too and
I I think it would be very difficult to
get the resources to do something like
this again um and also it the filming
with hospital patients is so much more
restrictive now that honestly I just and
our rights requirements um are so much
more restrictive that I I don't actually
believe that it could be done now I mean
I know that um there's kind of a new uh
there's a new film being made at Mass
General um kind of like Hopkins um um
247 which I think will be great but this
is being made by a network and they have
a lot more money than we do so I think
this would be very very very tough uh to
do again and you know in those days we
were very confident that we would
continue on and on and on and uh you
know we we believed in our own you know
eternal life and um the television
environment has changed so radically
that I don't think that we have that
same confidence anymore so the answer is
kind of no I'm very glad that we did it
I mean I I'm very proud of it but uh I I
think it'd be very tough to do it again
right and there's a question on this
side of the
room um I don't know I think part part
of it really depends on um on how the
show does next week and the week after
so you should really like tell every
everyone you know about it um because um
you know it it depends whether whether
my station WGBH feels it's commercially
viable in order to make them available
again I mean I think they're a
tremendous resource and I think we
really have to think of how um how we
want to use them um carefully but I I
think it you know unfortunately it
really does depend to some extent on how
well the program does
next week if it does very well um then I
think that there are a lot of
possibilities so let's hope tell
everyone set their DVRs and there's a
question at the back of the room yes uh
first thank you for all that you've done
to help us understand your development
and growth into physician Hood um as a
medical educator I am very aware of your
having entered medical school when the
new pathway was very young
and one of the questions that I am often
asked is so did the curriculum at
Harvard Medical School did make a
difference how did tutorial
experiences uh work in those first two
years of basic Sciences contribute to
your learning and has there been any
lasting impact of that at that time very
new curriculum and a curriculum that
much of the rest of the world has looked
at tried to emulate and tried to
understand whether or not it was worth
it all and you're the people who can
tell us whether or not it was worth it
all so I'd be interested in your
perspective at this
point so I still remember some of the
cases from first year medical school I
remember a case of tattoo there was some
like tattoo thing and the the tattoo
went into the maccrage and yeah am I
there Harvard Medical St do you guys
have that case Okay so there was like
some clue so I think that um and I I
actually consider myself a medic medal
educator as well I mean not a not a PhD
sort of only medical educator but I do a
lot of medical education and I think
that the case-based method is something
that really helps hone and makes you
want to learn and excite you and brings
some sort of emotional connection to the
learning you're doing and I think that
if there are any neuroscientists here I
think that they would tell you that when
you have an emotion emotions height in
your memory and so maybe there is
something to it I I don't know it was
very pleasurable I learned a lot about
the people and it's sort of a model of
how you learn sort of over and over and
over again in medicine so I would say
that I would do it again that way but I
actually wasn't in the other way so I
don't know have anything to compare
to I I uh was not sure it was altogether
a success um I thought that
fundamentally what one wants of a doctor
getting out of medical school is a
humongous amount of um learning and the
uh New Path way when we started was
brand new and uh relatively disorganized
and I think a reasonable amount probably
fell through the cracks my guess is uh
that with some years of experience to to
work on it that many of those Kinks have
been ironed out but I think that
um you're you're not going to be able to
get all the way um to the other end of
Medical Training as a doctor without
having a lot of FaceTime with patients
and it isn't necessarily the case that
the first or second year of medical
school it needs to be that way I don't I
don't think um I I
enjoyed the
uh I I enjoyed the the kind of story
aspect and the the uh the kind of
investigative aspect of looking into
cases in the early years um but I have
to say I was really really anxious about
the volume of stuff that I was being
required to learn and I think it in some
ways it would really have been easier to
have learned a huge huge volume um if it
had been taught in ways that other
courses that I'd already taken uh where
I was similarly trying to learn a
massive volume of new information were
presented which is that it's it's fairly
well organized and it's there a here it
is here you know start to read it take
your notes use your flashcards get
through it and know it and I think that
is actually what's needed of medical
students so um yeah I have mixed
feelings I I would also say that it not
necessarily the new pathway but some of
the choices about how much time we spent
on different topics like we spent six
weeks on genetics and embryology we
spent eight weeks on anatomy and
physiology I even now like I never did I
never did the arm you know and like even
now I never really remember the bones
and the ri you know so I think that some
of the choices were made not necessarily
new pathway but that restricted Anatomy
I mean Jay a psychiatrist he probably
doesn't need anatomy and but I'm not
sure he needs embryology either but uh
um but I so I think some of the you know
these heavy duty Sciences genetics is
really good for science but learning the
Riff flips that I learn in medical
school never really helped whereas
learning the arm and the hand would have
been more helpful but that's not
necessarily New Path well maybe it is
new pathway choices so