Ideas

I'm full of ideas! Here's one.

Medicine is full of tests. These tests can be useful, or not useful depending on what their "sensitivity" and "specificity" are. What does this mean? Let's use an example, say, complete blood counts (CBCs) and bleeding.

Sensitivity tells us how good positive CBCs are at picking up bleeding. Specificity tells us how good negative CBCs are at telling us there's no bleeding. When a test has lots of false positives, it means it's got great sensitivity, but crappy specificity. When a test has lots of false negatives, it means it's got crappy sensitivity but great specificity.

All of medicine loves these sensitivity/specificity/positive predictive value/negative predictive value garbage.

I'm here to talk about false false positives.

Say you use a CBC as a test for bleeding in a patient (all you doctors shut up; it's the best example I could come up with). The CBC shows anemia, and the patient is indeed bleeding. Yay, true positive. OR IS IT?????

What if the patient IS bleeding... what if the patient DOES have anemia... but what if the patient's bleeding isn't severe enough to cause anemia? What if the cause of the anemia is something else? This is what I mean by false false positive. A false false positive is a false positive in someone who just happens to have the illness you're testing for.

Someone should really study this. I mean, it won't really make a BIG change to the statistics out there already, but it's something that would impact the reliability of EVERY medical test. False negative rates would be adjusted upwards to reflect false negatives and false false positives.

Anyway. That's my brilliant idea. If you need a thesis, go right ahead. I didn't articulate it well, but I'm postcall so up yours, freeloading moochfaces.

Perseverance

Med school wannabes listen up.

You can get in.

You will get in.

Well. You'll probably get in. Provided you aren't a complete douche, you will get in if you stick to the only rule that matters in getting in and past medical school.

Don't give up (DGU).

If you really want to get into medical school, DGU will get you in. You may not believe me now, cause you're on the other side of the fence, and you're thinking "How the hell does DGU overcome my 60% average and my thousands of misdemeanours on my police record?" IT WILL WORK. All you have to do is keep trying.

Sooner or later, somebody somewhere is going to let you in. It might take a lot longer than you expected or wanted, but if you persist you will get in. After a second degree, your chances go up. After living in the community, your chances go up. Every year you spend after school doing things will improve your chances. DGU IS THE KEY.

DGU is the key to everything in medical school too. There is no trick to learning how to start intravenous lines, to learn how to intubate people, to how to go back to work after your attending staff has just told you you're going to fail. There have been too many times when some technique or set of facts has seemed just beyond my comprehension, but persisting will yield results. DGU my friend, and you will graduate.

Navy seals and medical school. What's the difference? In the seals, they feed you. DGU.