Alex, I'll Take Tattooing and Body Piercing for $200 Please

I fully intended to blog last night. I really did. But I ended up spending 3.5 hours taking an "open book" test on the computer for my Wisconsin medical license. After that, words kept sliding around on the screen and I felt like my eyes were carp shooting. Weird analogy, I know.

I have to admit, I didn't really take this test seriously. Until I started reading the questions and paging through screen after screen of subheadings such as Application for and issuance of special plates and Credential denial, non renewal and revocation based on tax delinquency. I paged back to make sure I wasn't actually taking the bar exam. Of course the questions based on these subheadings weren't all hard. Many focused heavily on controlled substances. For example, my personal favorite question was "Nasal inhalation of cocaine before performing an appendectomy is an example of unprofessional conduct. True or False?" Now, I know they tried to trip me up by saying 'nasal inhalation' instead of the more common term 'snorting' but I think if this came up for a vote the medical licensing board would frown upon that particular scenario. Another one was "In addition to maintaining meticulous chronological records of the dispensation of controlled substances, a physician must also record the name of the substance. True or False?" Umm, difficult to call your record keeping meticulous if you don't even note the name of the drug you are recording isn't it? Unless of course you are in a situation where giant insects are flying out of a thick mist that has blanketed your town and you need to race to the pharmacy risking being snatched up and rolled into a giant cocoon just to get some narcs for your hurt companions back at the grocery store. Then record keeping goes out the window. That's the reasoning I used to outsmart these test writers and select the correct answer.

I'm proud to say that I passed the test with a 97% despite the craftiness of the medical licensing board and my inability to pin down the relevance of the questions to my particular practice of medicine. I shouldn't be so negative though....that might be construed as an example of unprofessional conduct. :)