Algorithm

“Internalize the algorithm,”
read the clinical science instructions
for today's OSCE.

At the top: abdominal pain.

The decision tree branched down
from symptoms to diagnoses,
unaware of its oversimplification,
its pretentious sparseness.

Seemingly aware of how it 
still stumped medical students.

That afternoon
When my standardized patient
described her stool as a derivative of red
I had not seen in those bifurcations