Each student then tours a hospital ward with the resident on call. Afterward, the students observe an endoscopy procedure. Students also spend a busy evening shift in the Emergency Room at University Hospital. The students often stay all night, and are sometimes pressed into service to help hold down violent patients, to wheel gurneys, or to sop blood. This experience gives students an appreciation for the sometimes heroic nature of a physician's work that no other experience imparts.
Students also spend a morning in the operating room observing surgery.
After standing at surgeons' sides during operations, students typically emerge with a new understanding of the technical and physically demanding nature of surgery, as well as the high level of tension in an operating room. Finally, I take the students in small groups to the state medical examiner's morgue to observe an autopsy. The medical examiner selects cases of suspected homicide or other particular interest to future lawyers. The students usually approach the morgue with some trepidation, expecting to undergo a grisly ordeal. Observation of an autopsy often is something of a metaphysical experience.