Chicago Tribune: Surgical intern: Lessons learned A better scenario?

The orthopedic resident told me to put a "thumb spica cast" on the guy's hand and have him follow up in the clinic. As a brand new surgical intern, I had no idea what a thumb spica cast was; let alone how to make one. So I went to Google Images to see what it looked like, clicked on YouTube to figure out how to make a cast and then headed down to the emergency room and pretended I knew what the heck I was doing. The ER attending physician said I had excellent technique and that it looked as if I had been doing it for years. Chicago Tribune