Casebook of a Community Internist

Blogs

• 7/22/2024

  Context: an integral tool for educating patients

  ‘Well Bill, your master spark plug is getting rusty,’ I said to a 72-year-old retired mechanical engineer.
• 6/19/2024

  The retirement glidepath

  Having had the privilege to re-write so many patients epilogues through his care, Dr. Hector Baillie reflects on the complicated task of creating his own.
• 6/5/2024

  The value of observation

  You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to practice the powerful art of observation—after all, his literary inventor was a physician.
• 5/27/2024

  Gout

  I got a bad strep throat, and antibiotics did the trick. Two weeks later, I awoke with a painful, erythematous, tender and swollen right forefoot. 
• 5/26/2024

  Reflections from the ER: Aleysha’s story

  One critical event debriefing in 35 years says a lot about the way we treat ourselves. We can do better.
• 4/10/2024

  Code Blue

  I was sitting in the cafeteria, taking a break from hospital work. My mind was somewhere else, maybe my patient list, or a book, or thinking about dinner. In an instant, I knew exactly where I was, and how fast time passed as I ran down the corridor.
• 3/27/2024

  AM or PM? That is the question

  There are two things certain in life: death and taxes. If our patients die, how important is it that we convey to next of kin an accurate cause of death? 
• 2/23/2024

  Insecurity in health

  We have vaccines and antibiotics, surgeries and nutritional diets, housing and protective institution—we just have to make them work together. 
• 2/9/2024

  It's ok to make a 'mystake'

  Mistakes need to be identified, analysed, reported and studied—so we don’t make them again.
• 1/30/2024

  Negative to positive: current thoughts

  We all know that lightbulbs work when negative electrons move to the positive terminal and in this case, a flow of ideas and actions improve patient outcomes.
• 1/11/2024

  Should we encourage dogs in healthcare settings?

  Be it as a pacifier in the ER, or as a diagnostician at the airport, dogs can make great 'medical devices.'
• 12/20/2023

  Finger sepsis

  We've come a long way in controlling—but not conquering—germ invasion.