Experience counts

Experience counts

The Thursday’s "safe" landing of the US Airways commercial plane
on the Hudson River in New York in deed was a miracle. Besides the
outstanding resume and profile of the pilot, I think his 28 years’
flight experience counts the most. It is not hard to presume all his
prior flight experience was not always perfectly smooth. He must
have encountered with all kinds of situations, from which he had
learned how to handle including the situation of this one, although
it is an extremely rare incident.

Most of us in the medical profession, no matter what specialty we
are, we do have gained more than 40 years’ experience, which has
continued to help us in handling the ongoing upcoming patients’
problems to be presented to us.

In my own instance as an internist, when a patient come to me with
pneumonia, there will be many thing instantly come to my mind
through my past 40 years' experience with hundreds or thousands
of treated cases, minor or complicated. For each individual case,
different approach with lab investigation, treatment and follow up
plans best for the particular case would automatically come to me so
that I can handle the situation without having much anxiety, even in
an emergency situation. Sometime I would talk to myself, and
assure myself that I had seen many similar cases and their various
outcomes before and I would perform an even better job this time.

Experience is not just technical skill, it is the main force behind the
scene.

So experience counts, it helps and helps a lot.

Yeh Tze