I love to talk about the lack of usefulness of the CBC. The student will get a very serious look on her face and try to take in the meaning of this. What do you mean a high white count does not prove infection and a low white count does not disprove it? It’s like telling a kid there is no Santa. Very sad.

Treatment is a tough one. All those medications and interactions and adverse effects are daunting, even for a seasoned clinician. For these students, these meds are all stars in a wide galaxy.

After a month in the ED, they start to get a feel for what the common antibiotics, antiemetics, and analgesics can do for you and to you. They also learn that treatment regimens are a quickly moving target and that you never stop learning.

The transformation of these students is remarkable. They enter as wary medical travelers and emerge as more confident and competent clinicians.

The ED experience has a way of taking years of classroom experience and making sense of it. Students learn to think about patients in real time and formulate a plan for diagnosis and treatment.

We allow them to step out of the herd of students we see on surgery or neurology rounds and think as an individual. This is the way it will be in their own practice; so, the sooner they start to think this way, the better doctors they will be.

And the great thing about the ED is that when the student strays from the herd, we can keep an eye out for them so they don’t get picked off by a lion or a cheetah.

Every student should have the opportunity to do a rotation in emergency medicine. I feel that their education would be incomplete without it.

Most academic departments are not able to have every student from their medical school spend time with them. This is why it is important for the community hospitals in the region of a medical school to offer rotations in emergency medicine.

If your hospital does not do this, consider talking to your administration about bringing in students.

There is benefit to all involved, especially the future patients of the students.

Dr. Baehren lives in Ottawa Hills, Ohio. He practices emergency medicine and is an assistant professor at the University of Toledo (Ohio) Medical Center. Your feedback is welcomed at David.Baehren@utoledo.edu.