Day 13: The Zhang Train

Every Saturday, the MS1s do an interesting little dance called the Zhang Train. I did it today. It basically entails cramming around the professor-prosected cadaver while Dr. Zhang reviews the disections of the past week. Then, after he's done numerous rounds of that, he moves from cadaver to cadaver answering questions and curious students form a train following him everywhere he goes.

The man is amazing. He grew up and went to school in China. He studied western medicine, but he says every doctor is required to study 400 hours of chinese medicine too. Back then, medical school was five years, and the first two years were horrible--deadly. Now, things have eased up. China is starting to follow an American path. Students go to undergraduate institutions for four years and medical school for four years.

Since he first graduated medical school and started work as a general surgeon he has taught Gross Anatomy. He says it is the best way for a surgeon to become good and proficient. Teaching Gross Anatomy for two or three years makes you memorize everything in the body, and makes you a much better surgeon.

Example: You need to do an appendectomy. Many surgeons will open up the abdomen and will not be able to find the appendix because it can turn on itself and hide in the intestinal wall. However, with a supreme knowledge of Gross Anatomy, Dr. Zhang has put many pompous young surgeons in their place as he deftly pointed out where the invisible structure was hiding.

The man is amazing. He was an accomplished surgeon in China, but came here for his children. However, he cannot practice medicine in America. America requires that he take all the licensing exams (like I will do) and go through residency again.

"The licensing exams I can handle," he said, "but residency ... so many nights on call ... (laughing) I'm too old for that."

His skills are peerless. He can find any structure, nerve, artery, etc. in under 30 seconds. He cleans up the most MS1-messed-up area so fast and well that it looks like an MS1 never touched it.

Mixing western and eastern skill, he told us today of how Chinese surgeons, when working on the thyroid, would not use anesthesia. Instead, they would insert one accupuncture needle laterally and medially in the neck, into a cutaneous nerve. Why would it numb the whole neck? He doesn't know, but it works. They do it all the time. That way, when they are working in the neck, they can talk to the patient. There are many nerves running through it, and as they work, they monitor the patient's voice. If it changes up or down, they know they are near a nerve, but still have time to move around it and not sever it. Conversely, western doctors give the patient gas and knock him or her out. They perform the surgery and cannot tell if a nerve is accidentally nicked until after the patient wakes up.

His heart is gold. He doesn't have to come in on Saturdays. Every other professor goes home. But Zhang, every fall, spends four or five hours a Saturday in the Gross Lab reviewing and teaching hungry, eager students because he loves it. He loves teaching and he loves medicine. He loves passing along thirty years of teaching Gross Anatomy to those wet-behind-the-ears.

That is the one and only Amazing Dr. Zhang.