My Peripheral Brain
"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."
~Sherlock Holmes
Welcome to my peripheral brain! This is a collection of knowledge, opinion, and tools useful for my art as a physician assistant in the emergency department. I very much adhere to and agree with Mr. Holmes opinion of the human brain, although some could argue there is some plasticity that can be acquired through practice. Of course, Holmes could be including this in his metaphor as he suggests that our knowledge should be categorized and organized in such a way as to make it easy to access when needed. Hopefully this website does just that. While having a running dialogue surrounding PAs in the ED, the goal is to be organized in such as fashion as to be easy to access.
My own career medicine can be partially attributed to my fascination with Sherlock Holmes and his amazing abilities of deduction. I remember reading these stories as a child and hoping to have mysteries of my own to solve. Through a convoluted route I am somewhat there as a physician assistant in the emergency room. The greatest high in emergency medicine is not in the fixing, although that is fun, it is the combination of seemingly obscure facts into one cohesive diagnosis. It was with great pleasure that only after my endeavor into medicine that I learned Holmes was, in fact, modeled after a real life physician Sir Conan Doyle observed in medical school, a Sir Joseph Bell. This story was told to me by Dr. Abraham Verghese in one of my favorite TED talks: A doctor’s touch. Enjoy.
