House: What Med School Fails To Teach You

Dr. Gregory House should be on faculty somewhere. He’s the missing link between American med schools and the great beaming light of Hollywood, between intelligence and hotness, between New York and Los Angeles. We should all be grateful for Dr. Gregory House, because he picks up where med school leaves off. What, you might ask, does he contribute to the canon of medical education? Among the more flagrant shortcomings of med school remedied by Dr. House, consider the following:

1. Med school fails to teach you that being physically attractive actually makes you sound smarter. And better still, sounding smarter is tantamount to being smarter.

And being smarter is what stands between you, young med student, and saving lives. So shape up, med student, and get hotter if you want to do any good in this world. And while you’re at it, you might consider developing a minor and non-disgusting physical limitation, because that’s part of what it means to be hot.

2. Med school fails to teach you that at least one (and often two) major diagnostic snafus per case are standard. Also, dear med student, you shouldn’t be too worried about the lasting effects of these first two snafus. The patient may go into septic shock or become temporarily vegetative, but that’s all part of the game. Just try, try again, and you’re sure to nail it by the third treatment option. After all, three failures would be far too much for the all-important forty-five minute rule (see below). And it might cause actual medical damage. The first two are freebies with only minimal lasting impact. So fear not, and diagnosis to your heart’s content.

3. Med school fails to teach you that medical trauma and human emotional complexity merit about forty-five minutes of your time roughly once a week. You could do forty-five minutes of each, but who wants to think about myocardial infarction for that long? And what a waste when you could spend some of that time accessing the aforementioned hotness resources. So it’s best to mix things up: a little medicine, a little drama, a little drug addiction, a little witty banter. This is perhaps the major shortcoming of med school: the outright failure to recognize that what goes on in the hospital corridor is easily as important as what goes on in the operating room. Take note, med student. And be prepared.

4. Med school fails to teach you that it’s okay to be snarky to patients as long as you also save their lives. It’s important to distinguish between the big things (like courtesy, kindness, bedside manner) and the really big things (like liver failure, cardiac arrest, and death). One way to embody this critical distinction is to simply ignore the big things in favor of the really big things. This is important, med student, because nobody’s paying you to be friendly. They’re paying you to keep them from dying. And that’s the bottom line.