The 7th Time’s a Charm

2022 Stanford 25 Skills Symposium Attendees and Faculty. Photo by Clinton Louie.

If you were asked what common theme you might expect at a bedside medicine symposium, Sherlock Holmes might not be the first thing you’d list.  But at the 7^th Annual Stanford 25 Skills Symposium, Mr. Holmes became a surprising through-line in many presentations.

Why would a fictional character fit in at this highly informational clinical teaching symposium?  Well for one thing, Mr. Holmes, while fictional, is a character created by a physician and also based on a historical physician (a Dr. Joseph Bell, whom Arthur Conan Doyle studied under).  And for another, he’s a perfect tool to describe the power and the joys of bedside medicine, which are, of course, the goals of the Stanford 25 symposium.

The symposium kicked off on Friday morning with a rousing introduction from John Kugler, MD, clinical associate professor of medicine, to an audience of around 120 from all around the country (and the world).  Kugler naturally acknowledged the difficulties of teaching bedside medicine during a worldwide pandemic, saying, “We managed to teach the entire physical exam over Zoom,” but he urged his audience to leave the symposium with a renewed sense of purpose as well as practical tips to share.  “It all starts with your enthusiasm for seeing patients and taking students to the bedside,” he said, asking attendees to concentrate on at least one thing from the symposium that they were excited about taking back to their learners.

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