CME Credit

It was a warm weekend evening, and the new interns were completing some of their first shifts in the ED. We were drained, but exhilarated, and a little punchy. One of the senior residents was sitting in the corner of the lounge, by himself. He was reading our textbook -- Tintinalli -- and by the looks of it, he'd made it to page 1675 or so.

One of the interns approached him. "Hey, buddy, we're got the rest of the weekend off. We're thinking about going out for some drinks tonight -- you want to come?"

The senior waved him off, "No, I've got a lot of reading."

Undeterred, my fellow intern pushed, "Come on, what for? You have boards coming up or something?"

The senior looked up from the book, and said something I'll never forget: "I'm reading to become a better doctor."

I don't remember what we ended up doing that night, but whatever it was, the senior's comment had lowered our enthusiasm for it by more than a few notches. In those heady days after graduation last year, nothing else would make the point so succinctly to this newly-minted intern: We were done with medical school, but we weren't done being students.