An unusally long day .. but productive .. which is much better than a short unproductive day.
- The Medical School graduation was today. This is the view from the stage .. where I was sitting .. 3rd row. Can't pick your nose when you are sitting on the stage. I wore my suit and tie. Was very well behaved and even got kinda wistful watching these new young physicians stepping into their careers. The speaker was Joseph Goldstein, who gave a nice short talk on the changing face of medicine today. His message: Genes are the future of medicine. I didn't know as many of the students in this class as I had others. I'm not one for ceremony or tradition … but this sort of event is meaningful to me: a recognition of four years of extremely hard work, and the true birthing of a herd of healers/helpers etc.
- Office hours tonight were uneventful and kinda fun. We had a first year medical student shadowing me and it was refreshing to see the novelty of family medicine through her eyes. We had two patients who were here with concerns about possible lyme disease. the first turned out to be a "textbook" case of pityriasis rosea, and the second was cellulitis of the butt. We froze some skin tags, treated a UTI (and learned the reason for the term "honeymoon cystitis") and did a few well-child visits, mixed in with a few other new adult patients and a post-partum visit.
She was struck with how easily I brought up the part of the social hisotry that rhymes with "hex" .. and how easily I asked about same-sex relationships.
"Just be matter-of-fact" I said.
Nothing is hard to talk about if you are not judgemental about it … and I don't mean "don't act judgemental" I really mean .. don't be judgemental.
This is easier for me with sexuality and other "challenging" topics .. and much harder for me with obesity and smoking and "bad habits" in general.
- Staying here at the office late to take care of the large pile of papers and patient messages. I got a bit behind on these last week .. and it takes a late night like this to really catch up.
- e-MDs is giving away its medication database. Hmm I wonder if NAPCI should try to distribute it … Multum will also give it away … but not for commercial use. The Multum Lexicon Guide, BTW, is a wonderful resource. A must-read for anyine interested inhealther informatics.
.. back to the charts …
