Perhaps you watched the film "Julie and Julia"
a few years ago. It is partly about a blogger, Julie Powell, who spent a
year making every recipe in Julia Child's best-known cookbook.
I am doing something similar (albeit less tasty and less likely to be made into a feature film that stars Meryl Streep). I am in the process of reading Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine in its entirety. Harrison's is a dense, 3,600-page, two-volume tome that is the closest thing to a bible in clinical medicine. I am reflecting upon some of its chapters during the year or so it takes me to finish.
From Ch. 1 ("The Practice of Medicine"):
The Physician as Perpetual Student
It becomes all too apparent from the time doctors graduate from medical school that as physicians their lot is that of the "perpetual student" and the mosaic of their knowledge and experiences is eternally unfinished. This concept can be at the same time exhilarating and anxiety-provoking. It is exhilarating because doctors will continue to expand knowledge that can be applied to their patients; it is anxiety-provoking because doctors realize that they will never know as much as they want or need to know. At best, doctors will translate this latter feeling into energy to continue to improve themselves and realize their potential as physicians...
I felt tremendously relieved when I recently finished my last exam of the first year of medical school. The relief was not just at being finished with exams, but at finally being able to study the parts of medicine that interest me without having to worry whether it is distracting me from my coursework. Even though I had just begun break, within a few hours of finishing my exams I was back in the library, reading textbooks. I'm not sure whether it's because I find my studies relaxing or whether I've simply forgotten how to relax.
In recent months I've solidified my foundational knowledge enough that I'm now able to learn about complex diseases. I understand the fundamentals of pharmacology, anatomy, biochemistry, histology, and physiology. I comprehend more of the medical terms I come across and can make some sense of blood tests and X-rays. Now that I have the tools, I now feel an unrelenting urge to tackle the massive compendium of knowledge I will need in order to recognize diseases and effectively treat them. In under a year I'll be on the wards seeing patients! I feel way behind, that there's no time to lose.
But of course, I can never be done. There is always more to learn. And we constantly have to refresh our knowledge: some things we learned in our classes just weeks ago have already gone out of date. Beyond that, physicians can always improve the way they interact with their colleagues and with patients.
Going into med school, I didn't expect learning about medicine to be quite this engrossing. I'm surprised at how willingly I've devoted my free time to improving my craft, to the exclusion of other pursuits. Being a "perpetual student" is an enormous obligation.
