Residents’ Orations

Orations are in general delivered by senior persons who have presumably done a lot of work in a specialized field. Unfortunately a number of orations arranged these days are not following this principle. They are often based ‘you-scratch-my-back-I will-scratch-yours’ principle. Or they are for paying back some obligation or to get something in return. I have disapproved of this for a long time, and always will. Perhaps this dislike was at the back of my mind when I decided to award one oration each to two of my residents. One of them I caught giving a test dose of an intramuscular iron preparation by the intradermal technique. The preparation stains the skin very badly. So a special technique has to be used while giving it deep intramuscularly, so that it does not track out and stain the skin. And here was my resident giving it directly into the skin! The other resident was found trying to make a skin incision with a stab knife using the cutting technique. The stab knife is to be stabbed in, and other knives are to be used to cut in the conventional manner. This resident was trying to make a series of linear cuts at the same site and not making a good job of it for obvious reasons. It was not as if they had not been taught what was required to be done. The injection technique was taught in the second year of their undergraduate training, and she was already into the second half of her first year of residency. The other one was doing ht second half of her second year of residency, and had observed a number of laparoscopies and done a few herself, and it was a laparoscopy in which she was cutting with a stab knife. She had made the incision at a dangerously low level too. So I decided to make them to extensive reading on these two topics, and give a talk on the respective topics for 15 minutes each. The talks would be attended by all residents in my unit and faculty. I decided to call these talks residents’ orations on the spur of the moment, probably to ridicule the current concept of orations, and also to make them feel a bit ashamed that they did not know what they should have known. They did read and did deliver the ‘orations’. SO they at least made an effort to read. They answered a lot of questions incorrectly. But we provided them with the correct answers. One resident came late, though all work had been finished. I awarded her one oration as a disciplinary action. I thing the residents got quite a bit of academic training and some in time management and discipline too. I hope there will be many more orations, and they achieve the purpose behind them.