Jellybean #35 with Charles Bruen SMACC 2015

Yeah, but, it's not rocket science is it?

So one super long training period is enough for most of us. Most. Not Charles. Charles studied aerospace engineering at MIT. (Yes that MIT.) Having literally engineered rockets Charles retrained as an physician. (Critical Care Medicine and Emergency Cardiology no less!) (Nutter.) Engineers make things happen. That’s almost the job description.

Matt MacPartlin gets a chat going about the engineering mind set and how it fits into the medical world.

We are confronted with problems all the time. Patient problems we can usually deal with, although its a curious type of logic we have learned to use. But have you ever been confronted by a system problem. Have you ever been in a meeting where some bright spark suggests a solution for that problem only to be sucked into the black hole of cynicism.

Have you ever had the depressing moment where someone says; “Oh, we tried that once and it didn’t work.”? (Funny how we didn’t abandon Activated Protein C a bit quicker eh?)

Charles looked at medicine and was fascinated. How he is looking at what we are doing is not necessarily the same as the way I am looking at it. Or how you are looking at it. I’m curious to see where he goes.

I don’t know many successful engineers have made this career jump but it cannot be many.

And Charles loves an old Series 2B Land Rover too. (Nutter.)