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Student doctors practice on you while you sleep

CNN Online :

Anthony Youn, M.D., is a plastic surgeon in Metro Detroit. He is the author of "In Stitches," a humorous memoir about growing up Asian American and becoming a doctor. Autumn. The air turns cool and crisp, leaves change color, and third-year medical students descend on hospitals to learn to be real doctors… by practicing on real people.
As a plastic surgeon, part of my job includes the art of suturing. Over the past 15 years, I've repaired more than 10,000 cuts, incisions, bites, and wounds.
I've seen it all - people who've been sliced by beer bottles, attacked by wild animals, and even injured by - I want to be delicate here - "personal, intimate devices." I've done so much suturing that sewing up people has become second nature. I can repair a dog bite to the face blindfolded. But how does a surgeon become an expert at suturing? By practicing on people, some of whom may not suspect it. When I arrived at medical school, I had never stitched up an actual person. The closest I came was beating my older brother in the game Operation. I had a long way to go. I began by learning how to tie surgical knots. I had never been an Eagle Scout or a sailor so my experience tying knots was limited to looping the laces on my Nikes. I started with a "knot-tying practice board." The board consisted of shoelaces and a simulated surgical incision made of plastic and rubber bands.
The first time I picked it up I felt as if I had six thumbs on each hand. It took several hours, but at last I got a feel for tying knots. Then I became proficient. And then I became a knot-tying wizard. Next step, the real deal. Suturing. Many hospitals save their old, unopened sutures so their industrious students can practice. In order to impress the surgeons and get a good grade, I had to dazzle them with my suturing skills. The pressure was on.
First, I collected a ton of unused sutures from the hospital. Then I borrowed some surgical instruments from my father, an ob-gyn. Finally, I went to the local butcher shop and bought a dozen pigs' feet. I brought them home and stuffed them into my freezer. Why? The texture of the skin on a pig's foot is very similar to human skin. Every evening I'd come home and practice. I'd cut the pig's foot with a steak knife and practice stitching it together, over and over, countless times, until my fingers got sore.