Week In Review


In honor of the L.A. Marathon today, I'm doing... nothing. As little as humanly possible. I don't mean to claim laziness is healthy, mind you, it's just that the marathon is being run very near me and traffic is a mess as a consequence. I'm not sorry to have an excuse not to stir from the house as it was a busy week. In no particular order, we have:

• A case of domestic violence. For obvious reasons I'm not giving any details here, but it gave me a chance to brush up on the details of reporting such incidents. I am so grateful that The Firm's risk manager is right down the hall; he was extremely helpful. The Beverly Hills police were also accommodating and sent an officer to take a statement from the patient. The one thing I will say is that no one should ever be afraid to report such an incident even if you started it. If someone responds to a relatively mild push, let's say, with significantly more force and intimidation, that is a serious problem.


• Getting peed on while trying to perform a pelvic exam. No big deal: the patient in question is demented so naturally I cut her some slack, and I was of course wearing gloves at the time. Still, it was worthy of note as that hasn't happened to me before. I learned that golden showers are not my thing.


• A truly awesome St Patrick's day party. V. and her spouse have an annual tradition of throwing a corned-beef dinner, with pizza for those who don't like corned beef, and it gets bigger every year. She called me the next morning and invited me to guess how many people attended altogether... there were 87 guests. I brought my green cheesecake and it was much appreciated. Also I lent her my slow cooker for the beef: they had six or seven cookers going. It's good to know mine still works, as it has to be at least 35 years old by now and it's still going strong. (I swiped it from my mother, who never uses it.)


• A training class for our new EMR (electronic medical record) system. The Firm has been using our current system for over three years now, and we're switching to a different one - mostly, I guess, because Tertiary Medical Center is implementing this particular system and since we're joined at the hip with them that means we have to switch too. The Firm is lauding the flexibility of this particular program, and it does in fact have many ways to enter information. You can use a point and click menu, or you can use a slightly different menu, or you can free text. The thing is there are so many different options that it's rather confusing. Still, I think in the long run we'll manage quite well and our current system has a nasty habit of freezing and crashing, which drives me nuts. I do need to spend more time practicing in the "playground," as the system personnel call the training area. I wish they'd chosen a more grown up phrase for it.


• A board meeting. Again, I'm not giving details here, but at every meeting I learn a lot about the issues our administrators have to deal with. As a doc it's easy for me to grouch and complain but I am trying not to do so much of that. I have sent more than my share of flaming emails about a problem, only to get embarrassed when the recipient responds with additional information about the problem that I did not know (funny how that works, isn't it?)


• Which brings me to the last event: I got an anonymous letter. I won't give details here except to say that it consisted of a series of complaints about one of the administrators, and it purported to be from one of the medical staff. I'm quite sure no doctor wrote this letter. I debated it, ran it past V. and decided to inform the medical director. I have passed it on to him. The weird thing is, it clearly had come through the mail - canceled stamp and all - but someone put it in my desk drawer. I wouldn't be surprised if it came from one of my office staff, though it could have come from any of the more than 200 personnel employed by the group. I may have gotten it because I have been known to complain about this particular person (who I believe is quite competent), which makes me feel lousy. If so it serves me right and gives me a reason to bite my tongue in the future, or at least not go off half-cocked.

At any rate, that was my week. How was yours?

Labels: Los Angeles, Medicine, The Doctor's Life