One of the many ways med school irritates me

Medical schools really want to humanize the patients to their students. One method my school has adopted is including a photo of the patient to go with each case we get in PBL.

(PBL is problem-based learning. Each session we get a new patient case where the information is presented to us as if the patient came to see the doctor. I'm sure I'll rant talk about PBL a lot this year so you should remember this.)

I generally like the photos when they fit the description of the patient because they help me remember the patient's symptoms and their diagnosis. But many photos do not fit the description of the patient. One common problem is that the photo does not fit the description of the patient. For example, the woman in this case is 5'3" and weighs 157 lbs.

This is the photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sharon_love/4154466098/

This woman does not weigh 157 lbs! Even if you're a smartass and tell me that people with large muscle mass weight more, blah blah blah, this woman does not look like a bodybuilder. She probably weighs 110 lbs.

It annoys me so much that this is such a simple thing but the school can't get it right! I'm pretty sure it's not that hard to find on flickr a photo of a woman who is 5'3" weighs closer to 157 lbs. Whoever is finding these photos is doing a terrible job of making these patient cases more realistic. This defeats the purpose of including photos!