I feel like if IBM's Watson ever became sentient and chose to be a doctor it would immediately get annoyed and go Sky-net on us for being stupid patients. It would seem like programming an algorithm of questions to come to a diagnosis would be fairly simple once you had amassed the research. The problem is that people are terrible historians.
"No." (Are you suuuuure?)
"Do you take any medications?"
"Do you take any medications?"
"Yes, albuterol for my asthma." (but you just said...)
"When did you start taking that medication?"
"When did you start taking that medication?"
"After my surgery."
"And what was that for?"
"And what was that for?"
"Taking out my spleen because of my sickle cell disease." (but that's exactly the sort of medical problem I wanted to know about!)
"And is that being successfully treated?"
"And is that being successfully treated?"
"Yeah, it's gotten a lot better since I started taking my hydroxy-whatever pill." (But I already asked you about medication!)
I think a good rule of thumb might be to try to give the patient at least 2-3 opportunities to offer up any given piece of information and then you might know the correct answer to most of your questions.
I got to help deliver another baby this evening - this time while shadowing a midwife, as opposed to an OB/GYN resident. It was a very simple delivery, so I noticed absolutely no difference in technique or style between the two types of baby delivering professionals.
I also failed at drawing blood again but, as promised, I failed in new ways. So, that's a plus.
Quote of the Day: Woman explaining why her daughter's obstetrics records were only partially in our system: "She moved to New York to make a better life for herself... from Pennsylvania."
TIL: Herpes gestationis is a antenatal auto-immune condition that has nothing to do with the herpes virus.
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