Poster Presentation, Part 1
I was huddled in a corner of the nurse's station, wrapping up the discharge charting for my last remaining patient. My fingers felt like lead as they tapped the keyboard, and my eyelids weighed a ton. The clock on the wall read 6:55 PM. Five minutes. If I could just hold out for five more minutes, this grueling day shift would finally be over.
Ah, I just want to go home...
A massive, jaw-cracking yawn escaped me. Rolling my stiff neck, I absentmindedly clicked on a popup notification on the hospital's intranet.
Oh, right. The autumn conference was coming up. Looking at the flashy poster and the packed schedule, I muttered to myself with the detached amusement of someone watching a fire on the opposite bank of a river.
"Well, it's not like I have anything to submit..."
I closed the popup with a wave of relief. Yes, I didn't need to worry about such headaches. Going home, kicking my feet up, and sleeping was my sole objective.
Right then.
"Oh, Hyeonjae. Haven't you gone home yet?"
A familiar, yet utterly unwelcome voice drifted from behind me. It was Professor Cheon Eunjeong, an attending in the Department of Emergency Medicine. I nearly leaped out of my chair, barely managing to compose myself as I scrambled to my feet.
"Ah, yes? Yes, Professor! I just finished my last chart and was about to head out!"
My voice trembled slightly with tension. An attending right before clock-out time is nothing short of a minefield. One wrong step, and your life is forfeit.
"Is that so? Good work."
Professor Cheon offered a brief word of praise and seemed to walk past. *Phew, saved.* Just as I let out a sigh of relief and prepared to sit back down—
"Oh, wait, wait. Actually, before you go, let's have a quick chat in my office. It'll only take five minutes."
My heart plummeted to the floor. *A chat. Five minutes.* In the medical world, the combination of those two phrases means only one thing: *Prepare to get absolutely ripped to shreds for the next thirty minutes minimum.*
Like a death row inmate being led to the gallows, I followed Professor Cheon to a small consultation room in the corner. She took a seat, and I sat opposite her, keeping my posture stiff and formal. *What did I do wrong? Did I get caught dumping that rectal foreign body case onto the intern earlier? Or did I drink too many packets of instant mix coffee?*
"It's nothing major, really."
Professor Cheon turned on her tablet and showed me something. It was the very same conference announcement page I had just looked at.
"I noticed the deadline for the autumn conference is this Friday." Her voice was incredibly sweet and bright.
"Ahaha... Right. Since today is Wednesday... there are only two days left."
Not knowing what else to say, I laughed awkwardly and played along. That was when Professor Cheon delivered my death sentence with the brightest, most innocent smile in the world.
"Yep. Let's write an abstract."
...Excuse me? My brain flatly refused to process the words.
"I'm sorry, what?" I asked, doubting my own ears. I had thought our hospital was a wonderful place that let 1st-year residents just focus on surviving inside the wards.
"An abstract. An abstract. Let's write just one and submit it."
I was dumbfounded. My mind went completely blank. Today was Wednesday night. The deadline was Friday at midnight. To write an abstract, I would first have to select a case, dig through relevant papers to build background knowledge, organize the patient's data, write the introduction, case presentation, discussion, and conclusion in English, and get the advising professor's approval... It was a physically impossible timeline. She was basically telling me not to sleep tonight or tomorrow.
"Oh, come on, why look so shocked? It's not like I'm asking you to do an oral presentation. That would be too burdensome. Let's just do a poster. A poster presentation."
If an oral presentation was the death penalty, a poster presentation was life in prison. Of course, it wasn't that 1st-year residents never did poster presentations. Every resident would probably have to do one at some point in their career. But doing it with only two days left was just wrong. It wasn't that a poster presentation was inherently difficult. The problem was the forty-eight-hour window.
Professor Cheon, completely oblivious to my inner turmoil, began picking out cases with sheer excitement.
"Well, we could use that TTP case you diagnosed recently. But TTP might be a bit weak... It's rare enough to draw attention, but you didn't really do much other than diagnose it. Oh! The one where we sliced open that patient's abdomen! That's perfect! 'A Case of Successful Resuscitative Laparotomy Performed in the Emergency Department.' The title alone has so much impact."
Professor Cheon pondered for a moment, then shook her head.
"Actually, no. I think we should save the laparotomy for an oral presentation when the patient is discharged and you're a 2nd-year resident. It's too good of a case to waste on a poster. But preparing an oral presentation with only two days left would be a bit much, wouldn't it?"
She sought my agreement with a devilish smile. I had no choice but to nod.
"Then that leaves only one. The myocardial infarction you caught presenting as a sore throat. 'A Case of Early Diagnosis of Acute Myocardial Infarction Presenting with Atypical Symptoms.' How about that? Clean and neat, right? Let's go with that."
Just like that, the topic of my very first academic abstract was decided in five seconds flat. Without a single gram of my own input being considered.
"Ha... Haha..."
Only a hollow laugh escaped my lips. Professor Cheon, seemingly taking my laughter as agreement, turned off her tablet with a satisfied expression.
"Great! It's settled then. Write up a draft and email it to me by lunchtime tomorrow. I'll review it and let you know what to revise. You can do it, right?"
I had no choice but to answer that devilish question with a soulless voice.
"...Yes, Professor."
Professor Cheon Eunjeong stood up with a satisfied smile. She patted my shoulder lightly in a gesture of encouragement.
"A poster is only one page anyway. Nothing to be scared of. All 1st-year residents do it, kid. Fighting! Fighting!"
Leaving behind that devilishly cheerful cheer, she casually strolled out of the consultation room.
No, that 'one page' is the final printed product hanging at the conference hall, you crazy woman... My inner self screamed, spitting blood.
I stood up like a person who had lost his soul. Dragging my feet, I crossed the ER and headed toward the locker room. Clocking out. Yes, I had to go home first. As I changed my clothes, my mind began frantically simulating the catastrophic scenario that was about to unfold.
First, data collection. The most basic yet most grueling step. I would have to dig through the entire medical record of that myocardial infarction patient who had come in with a sore throat. I imagined myself logging into the EMR and opening the patient's chart. The vital signs upon admission, the physical examination records I had written, the subtle trends in the ECG waveforms, the graphs showing the hourly changes in cardiac enzyme levels.
The comments on the cardiology consultation sheet, the black-and-white angiogram images showing the severely narrowed blood vessels, the final diagnosis, the treatment course, and the discharge summary. I would have to comb through everything from A to Z to extract meaningful data worthy of presentation. Within those hundreds of pages of records, I had to find the clues that proved the uniqueness of this case. Just this step alone would take at least three to four hours.
Second, literature review. I couldn't just organize the data and submit it saying, "We had a patient like this, isn't it neat? The end!" I had to explain the clinical significance of this case. To do that, what else? I had to read papers. I imagined myself sitting at the small desk in my studio apartment, logging onto PubMed. I would painstakingly type keywords related to this case into the search bar: atypical MI, sore throat ACS, non-chest pain ACS.
Then, a despair-inducing number would pop up on my screen.
From those thousands of English papers, I would have to filter out at least ten that were most relevant to my case. I'd have to read them all, interpret them, and perform a comparative analysis to build a solid foundation for my argument. English. Just thinking about it made me want to throw up. The nightmare of reading those damn foreign textbooks that had tortured me throughout my six years of medical school.
Third, writing the abstract. After surviving all those hellish steps, it would finally be time to write. This was the most urgent part. By tomorrow afternoon, I had to complete an English abstract structured into an introduction, case presentation, discussion, and conclusion, all while adhering to the conference's strict formatting guidelines. Easier said than done. With my English skills, I was supposed to convey all of this concisely, logically, and professionally? Diving into the Han River—no, the Nakdong River, since I was in Geoje—might actually be a faster and more peaceful way out.
I stared at my reflection in the locker room mirror.
...Still. I desperately searched for a silver lining. Since the final poster has to be as concise as possible anyway... if I focus on images and graphs... I can make it work somehow...
I comforted myself.
Yeah... an oral presentation... this is way better than an oral presentation... If it were that, I would have handed in my resignation letter right here, right now...
In the end, only one conclusion remained.
Sigh, I'm going to have to ask those gallery ghosts for help again.
Damn it. Did I really have to go groveling to those lunatics again?
As I stepped out of the hospital, the cold night air greeted me. Go home, shower, sit straight at my desk, and start organizing data... Ah, just thinking about it was horrifying. But what choice did I have? In this world, when an attending tells you to jump, your only response is to ask how high.
I boarded an empty bus and stared blankly at the night view outside the window.
"Sigh... whatever, let's do this. Fuck it."
It's not like a little sleep deprivation ever killed anyone.