Expertise

I’m kind of an amateur dinosaur nerd.  What can I say, I’ve liked paleontology since I was a kid.  Anyway, I was surfing through some paleontology blogs, as I have been known to do on a Saturday, and found a post about a paleontologist who was sorting through bones in Ottawa’s Canadian Museum of Nature.  Mental Floss had the story, also. Without getting deep into Mesozoic detail, the bones were classified as two genera similar to triceratops.  The paleontologist, Dr Nick Longrich, reanalyzed the bone fragments and decided that they were actually two different genera of Canadian dinosaurs that were previously believed to only come from the American southwest.*

There are apparently blatantly obvious differences between all of these animals...

Ceratopsidae Skulls, to Scale by Danny Cicchetti (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons    

It isn’t all that uncommon for something like that to happen.  Here is another post where a PhD student stumbled upon a previously undescribed sauropod (long neck big dinosaur) genus sitting in a box in London’s Natural History Museum.

I don’t actually know a lot about classifying fossils.  It seems incredible to me that an expert can look at the curve of a bone, or the shape of an opening on a bone fragment, and know that they are holding a new genus of dinosaur.  Think about the time one has to spend, the investment in knowledge, and the experience level needed to be able to do that.  That is an incredible amount of deep, deep expertise needed for that job.  You also hear about this kind of expertise in relation to art appraisal, where an expert can look at details and name the artist – based on friggin’ brush stroke patterns.  Pilots can feel something wrong with their aircraft, based on how it is handling at that moment, in those conditions. 

I wish I had a job like that where expertise is necessary.

Oh, wait.  I do.

I can tell sick-not-sick in a glance from a dozen feet away from a patient.  I can tell, with reasonable accuracy, what kind of call I am going on based on the address and time of day.  I know what particular streets offer for traffic patterns at different times.  I know the interiors of a hundred different buildings, and the best place to access each.  I know how to bring the calm to the chaos.  I know how to intubate a person at floor level in a dark, dirty, cramped room.  I can tell the difference between sinus and AFib at a glance.  I can look at a pile of medications, know what they were prescribed for, and know which the patient hasn’t been taking.  I know my way around the intestinal underground tunnels of stadiums, airports, and other big buildings.  I know if that family member right there is going to be a problem.  I can listen to breath sounds, watch a patient breathe, and feel a pulse to generally know if the patient will need their breathing to be assisted on the way to the hospital.  I know whether it is worthwhile to start an IV in the car, or wait til after extrication.  I have a sense of who needs restrained before anything even happens.  I know the right way to cut a down coat (get it wet first, so the down doesn't explode everywhere).  I know when a house is dangerous.  I know how to calm a frightened child.  I know how to calm a frightened adult.  I know how to give a biophone report so as to get what I want.  I know how to communicate with a team of providers and other personnel to manage emergencies.  I know how to manage an MCI. 

What things do you know?

*A link to find the published paper is here.