A bunch of people bit my head off on my A Better Way To Round post, assuming that I was ignoring patient communication. Idiot Savant’s comment pretty much sums it up–the point I was making was that because we spend so much needless time rounding, we often lack time for patients, in terms of communicating properly, frequently, and promptly, updating them and them families, doing procedures, etc.

I want to improve rounding so that we medical students, interns, residents, fellows, and attendings have more time for more important stuff than collecting numbers from a computer screen and copying them down multiple times. (Each person in the above list spends at the very, very least one hour doing this. Every. Day.)

Other ideas for improving patient care and communication:

• A little notebook and pen for every inpatient. They write down their questions, and when we stop by we answer them. Easy.
• For the less acute patients who are needing to reach some goal before discharge (I’m particularly thinking about fluid-retaining CHF patients who need to diurese but go to the cafeteria way too often): A calendar where they can list their daily weights, to motivate them. This could be applied to other patient populations as well.

I miss hearing people’s reactions to my posts! So from now on, comments are on by default (but will generally be off for some certain topics that turn low-quality and low-yield quickly–I think we can all name said topics ourselves).

A blogger describes, with pretty damn good insight, his struggle with his own borderline personality disorder. Sounds about right to me, and well-written, too.

Could a general surgeon or OB please explain to me how you stuff a plastic grocery bag full of cocaine packets into your vagina and it makes its way into your abdomen? I know the fallopian tubes connect to the abdomen, but seriously, what the hell?