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Thanks for listening to the Nocturnous shame in medicine, the lost forest.

If this is your first time tuning in, welcome.

And I actually recommend you rewind and start at episode one.

This is a series that builds on itself over time, so starting at the beginning will definitely lead to the richest listening experience.

Enjoy the show.

So a few months ago, I was texting with a friend of mine who's a surgeon, and we were

joking about how when we were kids, we were such perfectionists. I mean, we had color-coded

notes, A-plus on every homework, and we were utterly devastated

when we got our SAT scores back and they were only in the 90th percentile.

And then my friend asked, what happens when you take a kid like that?

A kid who's a perfectionist and plop them into medical school and tell them to be

perfect or else someone dies.

And we were actually laughing about this over text because even though it sounds like an exaggeration,

it's also kind of true.

The stakes in the profession of medicine are so high

that it sometimes feels like perfection is the only acceptable way.

Of course, we know that nobody's perfect.

So how do we embrace that truth and still do our job?

...