So today we had orientation for third year. Dean Nasca came and spoke to us, in the same auditorium actually. He was slightly less scary this time... partly because I neither walked in late nor had my cell phone go off while he was talking (Glen reminded me to turn it off first).

He always has really appropriate things to say. Like at Parents' Day in March, he told us the story of when his father dropped him off at his interview for medical school at Jefferson and said to him, "If you work hard, you could run this place one day, Son." And how when he was appointed Dean of the medical school, his father came to the ceremony, but his Alzheimer's Disease had progressed so much that he could hardly recognize his son, let alone appreciate the moment. I think half the room was misty-eyed.

At orientation first year, he gave us a talk on what it means to be entering a profession. This really touched me because I actually never completed my application to UMaryland for med school because they wanted me to write an essay on that very topic and I didn't really know what they meant. Dean Nasca explained to us that all of medicine relies on the fact that society implicitly trusts doctors to help and not hurt them, and without that trust the entire system would collapse. By entering medical school and putting on our white coats (however short they are for the time being) we were entering into that covenant and had the entire weight of the profession on our shoulders. We represent the medical profession as a whole to anyone who knows we are medical students, and any time we do something stupid or irresponsible, we weaken that person's opinion of the profession, thus hurting every other doctor's ability to perform their job.

Have I said he's pretty intimidating?

So when we came back today, he again had the perfect story to tell. He brought up the recent bombings and bombing-attempts in Great Britain, which were planned and carried out by medical professionals (CNN.com - Doctors at heart of UK terror probe). He told us that these doctors had broken the trust in a way that no one had ever imagined, and he assured us that their breach of professional responsibility (to say the least) would trickle down and affect our ability to help our patients. Sound far-fetched? Dean Nasca then told us how he did his nephrology fellowship during the Iranian hostage crisis. In an attempt to look more mature, he had grown out a beard, as it held his only grey hairs (at the time). One day he was called in for a consult on a patient checked-in to the hospital and that patient refused to talk to Dr. Nasca because the patient thought he was Iranian because of the beard (he's actually an Italian from Brooklyn). It's really unfortunate that there was any of this material for Dean Nasca to draw from, but he really managed to pull his two orientation speeches, separated by two years, together seamlessly. It was intense.

On a lighter note, as part of the dash of grammar-nazi that I have in me, I've been really conscious of my splitting of the word 'another.' Like if you want to take the phrase "another level of responsibility" and bring it up a notch, I find I'll say "a whole 'nother level of responsibility." Nother is not a word. I guess it should be "another whole level..." that would work just fine. But I never say that.
So today, much to my satisfaction, Dean Nasca himself used that very (incorrect) phrase himself!! "A whole 'nother level...."
I mean if you listen you can hear people use the word 'nother all the time, but that fact that Dean Nasca said it kind of excuses me. He runs this place, for crying out loud.