Prayer Meeting

My medical school ran on the quarter system. Every eleven weeks, a new quarter began. We began to take surgery courses in the ninth quarter and would have class room and surgical clinics until we graduated. Surgery was interesting, and because we had some good teachers, we enjoyed it.

EXCEPT FOR:

Prayer meeting. This was a gathering of all surgical students, ninth through twelfth quarters held in a large auditorium at one PM each Friday. Each class tried to sit together, and all tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. The later quarter students were especially nervous because they were expected to know a lot more than the ninth or tenth quarter classes. It was a bitch of the first water!!

Why? Because it was run by the chief resident in surgery and the grand doo dah professor of surgery. Now, the professor was benign, although he could be sarcastic (a quality that I had not learned to appreciate yet). The chief resident, who later became a friend, struck terror into us all. The chief resident was a fifth year general surgery resident but also on the surgical staff as a paid member. He was selected by the teaching staff each year, and as chief he was responsible for scheduling other residents, teaching, problem solving, and everything else that no one on the regular staff wished to do. His perks were prestige, some salary, and the fact that he got the pick of any case that hit the door, no matter what. I knew only three chief residents, but they were all superior physicians and highly successful in their later careers. All general surgery residents would have gladly traded a gonad for the job.

Our chief resident was "Big Lou". He went on to become a renown transplant surgeon. He once told me that he always went to bed with a surgical journal. " you learn something, and it is a great sleeping aid." He was an imposing figure of a man, slicker than greased owl poop, and always right in his judgments (at least it seemed that way). He and the professor ran the prayer meeting and in a perverse way were proud of the name we had given the "conference". I do not remember how the roll call was kept, but I do know that it was not a class to cut. Unless you were hospitalized, you were there!

The format was this: A patient from the wards was brought in and presented to the audience with history, physical findings, and lab reports. The diagnosis was not usually given but ranged from the exotic to the everyday ailments that affect people. At that point one or more students were asked to come to the stage. That was white knuckle time. Those students would be queried on anything remotely to do with the case in front of their peers and judged by Big Lou and the professor. If a mistake was made or ignorance professed, results ranged from a mild rebuke and the answer, to a "WHAT, YOU DON'T KNOW!!!!", and the thought out loud that maybe another profession was in your future.

I only remember one time that I was in the hot seat. Big Lou and the professor quizzed me on a lady's varicose veins, and I got away like a bandit in a cold sweat. I am sure there were other times, but repression is a powerful mental mechanism. I did see a few compatriots raked back and forth though, and until graduation day, Prayer Meeting was always on our minds.

One more thought on Big Lou. He wasn't a bully, but he believed that tension was a great adjunct to learning. In our last quarter, we were each paired with a surgical resident, including the chief resident. The most timid and introverted man in our class got Big Lou. We wondered if he would survive. He was a good student but came across as scared of his shadow. Well, he realized that it was sink or swim time, so he gave Big Lou everything he received from him right back. Both of them survived and became friends.