HIV

I haven't seen as much HIV/AIDS at Stanford as I had during medical school in San Francisco. This is simply a reflection of the differences in patient populations. The city was one of the first places to be swept by HIV, and the practitioners there gravitated toward the disease. As a medical student, I worked with some physicians who saw the phenomenon in its infancy, before we understood the disease or what it meant. Hearing their stories was really inspirational. These heroes of medicine reached out to those who were young and sick and dying in droves. No one knew how the disease was spread. No one knew how to treat it. But some of the doctors at UCSF were the first to describe the natural history of the disease and care for its victims. It was wonderful to learn from some of the pioneers of the disease. I saw a dozen patients on my medicine rotation at San Francisco General Hospital including a case of acute HIV (I blogged about this a long time ago).

It surprised me the other day to realize that so far in residency I've only had a handful of patients with HIV/AIDS. I'm okay with this. I chose Stanford knowing that its patient population differs so much from that of San Francisco. But this was also another reminder of the importance of broadening my training environments and clinical experiences to see as much as I can.