Mea sententia

Our institution has recently started using NRC PIcker to collect patient feedback and grade clinical providers.  When I learned of this, I was anxious, defensive, offended and prepared to be angry at the prospect of being graded by data from some feedback form. I suspect my reaction is pretty common among providers. My discovery that the data includes some very useful material - and that I score well - has been a surprise, somewhat confusing, and led me to do some self-observation while with patients. 

All mushrooms are edible, but some only once.  (Serbian proverb.)

For all my friends and colleagues at CMHC (with deepest apologies to Lerner and Lowe)…

All I want is a place somewhere,

Not locked down by Committee Chairs,

Where all who want can go to share,

Now wouldn't that be loverly?

Lots of documents for us to read.

Lots of communication, indeed.

Where creativity can breed.

Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?

Oh, so loverly as we all collaborate at will

We would never need to budge

For stuff that thrills like a sleeping pill.

Sir William Osler famously said: “Listen to the patient. He is trying to tell you what ails him.”

The German philosopher Hegel said, “We learn from history that we don’t learn from history.”

The process of becoming a physician is a long and gradual process. Scattered through this glacially slow and often painful process are episodes that are transformational in every sense of the word, experiences that impact what kind of physician one becomes. Or even, whether or not one becomes a physician. 

I keep a bar of soap in my desk at the office as a reminder of progress in medical care. It was my grandfather’s idea.

It played out more like a television skit than most television skits. I wouldn’t believe it myself had I not been there.

“When you pay a lot of money for bullshit, you have to pretend you like how it smells. To do otherwise is to admit you were wrong, and that is not allowed in management.”

From STAR-Whacked at Trustus Pharmaceuticals. 

Life must be understood backward. But it must be lived forward. (Soren Kierkegaard)