In the outpatient clinic of the trauma surgery department, rare cases were not uncommon. However, since his teacher only held the title of attending physician and shared the same clinic day with Professor Deng Yong, no patients with rare conditions came for consultation.
Another patient with plantar fasciitis arrived. Through questioning and physical examination, Fang Ziye ruled out fractures and didn't feel any particularly hard lumps. Based on the patient's symptom of increased pain when stepping on a hard protrusion, he could almost confirm the diagnosis.
He instructed the patient to buy a pair of shoes with softer soles and sent them for an X-ray to rule out any suspicious 'tumor' lesions, thus concluding this patient's consultation.
When seeing patients in the clinic, one must never be careless or lacking in thoroughness!
While fractures could be essentially ruled out through physical examination, tumors couldn't.
At least Fang Ziye's examination skills weren't that profound yet.
Yuan Weihong watched Fang Ziye, who had been following him in the clinic for two years and now exhibited quite the demeanor of a young doctor, wandering around the ward. Even after Fang Ziye finished seeing the last patient with chronic ankle pain, Yuan Weihong gestured with his hand and said, "Stay there for a while. Some patients will be coming back to check their scans. You look at them first, then write up the medical orders yourself. If there are any errors or inappropriate decisions, I'll point them out to you."
"It's a pity I didn't bring any tea," he added.
Fang Ziye was instantly delighted upon hearing this and made a mental note: "Master, next time I can bring some."
Yuan Weihong responded with a smile.
He had been through the same age as Fang Ziye and understood that at this age, young doctors, with their gradually maturing theoretical knowledge, wanted to experience the thrill of being a doctor...
However, after Yuan Weihong delegated this responsibility, Fang Ziye's Knowledge Points increased as if possessed, simply by examining the scans of subsequent patients and carefully pondering over the medical orders. In just one hour, his Knowledge Points increased by thirty-nine!
This frenzied growth rate was many times higher than what he would have gained by diligently writing medical orders in the ward, meticulously inquiring about medical histories, and paying attention to every detail.
Appropriate ambition was very useful for one's growth.
After work, Yuan Weihong still straddled his electric scooter with both feet on the ground. Looking at Fang Ziye, who was smiling like a eunuch[1], he asked, "The sense of achievement from seeing patients independently feels pretty good, doesn't it?"
Fang Ziye nodded steadily: "Thank you, Master, for giving me the opportunity."
Yuan Weihong turned on the ignition and moved forward a couple of steps, then reversed two steps, still with both feet on the ground: "Without the pressure of writing papers weighing you down, your whole attitude has become much more relaxed, hasn't it?"
"You've made great progress recently."
As Yuan Weihong's first student, Fang Ziye had been by his side diligently for more than two years. Naturally, Yuan Weihong had noticed Fang Ziye's improvements.
Fang Ziye immediately shook his head.
His teacher had given him a Q1 SCI paper in the 'super-master's natural field.' How could Fang Ziye dare to say that writing papers wasn't good? It was just that his own abilities weren't enough. If he could consistently produce such high-quality papers...
Not to mention pursuing a doctoral degree, even occasionally joking with an associate professor in the department, the other person would have to put up with it.
Doing research was not only a shortcut to pursuing a doctoral degree but also a kind of shortcut to promotion.
In clinical work, you only communicate with patients, but research achievements are a way of communicating with the entire world, projecting your voice and that of your institution to the world.
The difficulty is also completely different.
With that, Yuan Weihong rode away on his bike...
However, when Yuan Weihong saw Fang Ziye again the next day, Fang Ziye seemed to have become a different person. From eight in the morning until twelve, he immersed himself in the ward, starting with physical examinations of the three patients under his care, all the way to completing the medical records, meticulous and striving for perfection.
Every word and sentence seemed to be carefully deliberated, with utmost attention to detail.
For every medical order used, Fang Ziye even found articles to support it, and if any modifications were needed, he would first consult Yuan Weihong about whether it was appropriate or if it would be considered armchair theorizing.
Fang Ziye's actions, his chain of evidence, and his cautious behavior put pressure even on his teacher, Yuan Weihong.
While not daring to say that others' published articles were absolutely useless, Yuan Weihong felt that it was completely unnecessary to change to an irrelevant drug just to reduce the probability of extremely rare complications.
However, adhering to the principle of caution, since the mechanisms of action of the two drugs were exactly the same, Yuan Weihong authorized the correction.
Yuan Weihong also heard from his youngest student, Jie Han, that after spending four hours in the training room in the afternoon, his senior apprentice Fang Ziye would invariably go to the market to buy various items weighing one or two jin[2] to take home, though it wasn't clear what he was doing with them.
And when on duty, unable to go to the training room, what Fang Ziye was doing was treating every newly admitted patient as if facing a formidable enemy, striving to be thorough and meticulous.
The task of the duty doctor was to handle the admission of new patients.
They were responsible for establishing the medical record template and writing pre-operative orders. Then, the next day, they would hand over to the ward doctor.
However, because the duty doctor had the right to first consultation for newly admitted patients on duty days, Fang Ziye unhesitatingly took on this role, questioning medical histories in detail, conducting comprehensive physical examinations, and even bringing diagnostic textbooks into the operating room to compare and conduct examinations one by one...
Although such serious behavior might seem rather strange to outsiders, it couldn't really be considered odd.
When truly pursuing knowledge, many operations, examinations, and diagnoses inevitably come from textbooks but also go beyond them. Being meticulous with patients is not something to be ashamed of.
Finally, on August 20th, five days after the last clinic session, Fang Ziye's accumulated Knowledge Points finally reached 50, enough to upgrade a basic medical skill to level 3, which could potentially allow an operation to meet the requirements of the training room.
After careful consideration, Fang Ziye chose to upgrade his Suturing Skill.
The department mostly handled major surgeries, and the only operation that young doctors could take on was suturing. No matter how good you were at other operations, superiors wouldn't let you do them; you could only show off in the training room.
But suturing was different. Perhaps if someone took a liking to you and knew your suturing skills had improved, they might grant you an opportunity or two.
In the training room.
The third suturing material for the suturing technique was tofu. For trauma surgeons, as long as they could suture tofu without the suture tearing the tofu, and after the needle passed through the tofu, no deviation holes were produced during the knotting process.
Moreover, if the suture knots were not loose, the suturing depth was not deeper than 5mm, and the lateral needle distance span was not greater than 5mm, it was considered a pass.
As is widely known, tofu doesn't become harder to suture the more you suture it, but the shallower the suturing, the more difficult it becomes.
Fang Ziye's careful work of twenty-four stitches along the long opening of the tofu appeared on the training platform. The sutures were fine and dense, the knots steady, as if they had been glued on after being measured with a ruler.
Around the training platform, not only were Fang Ziye's junior apprentice brothers shocked to see this, and not only were Fang Ziye's classmates incredulous, even the doctoral senior apprentice brother who happened to be in the training room was quite amazed.
"Could this be little Fang's normal performance after not writing papers?"
Fang Ziye felt inwardly relaxed and looked up at everyone with a smile.
This time, the impressive performance wasn't bought by the teacher; it was his own growth.
Translation Notes:
[1] The term "公公脸" (gong gong lian) literally means "eunuch face," which is an idiomatic expression for an overly ingratiating or sycophantic smile.
[2] A jin is approximately equal to 500 grams or 1.1 pounds.