Mea sententia | Peter Elias, MD

My blog represents my personal experiences and perspectives. This includes many anecdotes from my medical practice. I have been scrupulous to anonymize these anecdotes and to avoid ever belittling or making fun of patients. (I often make fun of and criticize myself, my colleagues, and the institutions where I have worked.)

Retirement is like playing Tetris

PeterElias

20 Feb 2017

After four decades in medicine, I retired from the active practice of primary care 15 months ago. I still get asked at least once a day: “Well, how’s retirement treating you?” My usual reply is that it is a learning process. A more accurate response would be that it is like playing Tetris, but with pieces that change shape and rotate unpredictably as they fall.

(For those not of a certain age, here is Tetris:

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On the road to shared office visits

PeterElias

19 Feb 2017

This is a repost of something I wrote in 2012 about how I discovered that doing collaborative officie visit notes with patients transformed the process for both the patient and myself.

Nearly a year ago I embarked on an adventure that has been changing how I practice medicine. It is also changing how medicine feels.

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Memo to my successor

PeterElias

1 Jan 2016

You are about to have the honor and great pleasure of working with a group of patients I have come to know and respect over the years. While I cannot tell you how to practice medicine, I feel no reluctance to tell you what made it so worthwhile for me.

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Retirement message to my colleagues

PeterElias

31 Dec 2015

Here is the letter I sent my colleagues upon my retirement from active practice in December 2015.

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Shared decision making in action

PeterElias

22 Aug 2015

Shared decision making based on both evidence and patient preference is popular in the medical literature of late. I don’t understand why anyone would object.

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The weather delay

PeterElias

15 Aug 2015

Some of the best and most unexpected moments I’ve had in medicine have involved children.

Sitting on her mother’s lap while I elicited the story of her illness, this particular three year old had seemed relaxed, social and quite articulate. Taking a cue from how attached she seemed to be to Mom and her obvious unusual maturity for age, I tried to be clever when it came time for the exam. “Do you want your Mom to help you up onto the table so I can check your ears and lungs, or are you big and strong enough to do it yourself.”

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The knee injury

PeterElias

8 Aug 2015

The computer generated routing slip on the exam room door said he was there because of a knee injury. That turned out to be only partly true.

When I entered the room, he was sitting comfortably on the exam table. I introduced myself, we shook hands, and as I sat down at the computer to open the EHR to his chart, I started with my usual fairly open-ended question:

Me: So, what brings you in today and how can I help?

Him: I hurt my knee this past weekend. (Note: this was a Wednesday.)

Me: Tell me about it.