I spent today shadowing a very generous general internist in downtown Minneapolis and got to see and do some interesting things. The highlights/lowlights:
- we had to tell a patient that he/she probably had metastatic cancer
- I heard what a ball-type aortic valve replacement sounded like and correctly identified the patient as having systolic murmer.
- I took a history from a patient recovering from pneumonia, read the X-ray correctly (which is a big deal, since reading the simple chest X-ray is sort of like reading tea leaves), heard an expiratory wheeze, and nailed the diagnosis of bronchitis and suggested an appropriate treatment course.
What amazes me is how proficient the doctor was at moving from one patient to another, giving each his undivided attention as though that was the only patient he had to see that day, even if he just came from a very difficult case.
Great article and when again it just stays in prove that: it's not what you do, but how a person does it!
Posted by: Aldo Seidel at January 15, 2011 12:44 AM