MedicsThe Iceman Cometh and the Patient Goeth
Listen: https://www.medicsmusings.com/episodes/the-iceman-cometh-and-the-patient-goeth/
Learning objectives
After listening and discussing, participants should be able to:
- Recognize how hierarchy can push trainees into procedures they don't understand.
- Discuss informed consent and the patient's perspective when students perform procedures.
- Explain the real purpose of caloric testing and why bedside tests carried more weight before modern imaging.
Discussion questions
- The chief resident's instructions sound authoritative and are nonsense. How would a student in 1972 know? How would one know today?
- What should the student have done when the plan didn't make sense? What makes speaking up hard?
- What did the patient understand about what was about to happen to him? What would informed consent look like here?
- Which procedures do students do on patients today, and how is consent obtained for their involvement?
- What “ice water calorics” of today, confidently taught practices, might look absurd in fifty years?
Quick activity
Role-play the moment the student is handed the bucket. One person is the student, one the resident. Practice a respectful way to ask for clarification or decline.
How to run it
Play the episode together (14 minutes) or assign it beforehand. Start with the first question to let people react to the humor, then move to the harder ones. Remind the group that the episode is satire and some of its “facts” are invented; spotting which ones is a good exercise in itself.
Background reading
Free to use. These guides are not accredited for CME or CE credit. Programs are welcome to use them within their own accredited activities. Episodes are satirical and AI-generated; characters and “facts” in them may be fictional, which is part of what makes them good discussion starters. Tell us how it went: send feedback.