h a l f b a k e r y"Bun is such a sad word, is it not?" -- Watt, "Waiting for Godot"
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Today I had occasion to wander up to the Nephrology
clinic, some piece of equipment needed setup and
tweaking. I glanced around, saw various patients there to
get their nephrites taken care of, everybody having a
nephrologically good time. Or not.
During my brief visit I discovered that Nephrology
concerns
itself with kidney function. I would never have guessed.
This is America: why not just say so?
Merchants of yore simply hung their shingle outside of
their
shop; horseshoes, eyeglasses, a .30-30, leaving no doubt
as
to what went on inside or whether a customer was in the
correct spot.
Down the hall people were ready to do the Apheresis
dance, similarly others had somehow found their way to
Bariatrics after first wandering into Otolaryngology.
Would
anyone know not to consult a gastroenterohepatologist
to
perform an otolaryngolectomy? I wonder.
I think that English-speaking patients who did not pursue
a
medical degree and/or who did not take Greek as a
second
language would be happier navigating a hospital with
clear
English identifiers. A pictogram showing a body outline
with highlighted organs (kidneys for nephrology, heart for
cardio, the feet, an ear, etc) would certainly help.
[link]
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My nearest hospital has plain descriptors - such as
an E.N.T. (Ear, Nose & Throat) There is also Sexual
Health, Heart and Lungs, Stomach and Digestion.
Those are the ones I remember. |
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Not "Neurology, cognitive function and memory" though, for reasons that are not hard to deduce... |
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//Would anyone know not to consult a gastroenterohepatologist
to perform an otolaryngolectomy?// |
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In the case of bariatrics, perhaps a picture would cause offence. |
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Only to fatties, shirley ? It's not like the sign in the front yard reads "Dead fattie storage" or anything ... |
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Actually, it's not just us patient-types who might benefit from this. The
docs, particularly the specialists, specialize enough that when they get
outside of their normal stomping grounds, they can get that bewildered
look. |
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For example - my wife is a diabetic with a kidney transplant. She gets
recurrent urinary infections. She broke her leg, needed a rod implanted in
her tibia - it got infected, it went septic, and she started having a hard
time breathing. So, before we could get her loose from the hospital, we
had a conference with her care-givers: orthopedics, radiology, physical
therapy, and outpatient care (for the most part, these people all speak the
same language); nephrology, solid organ transplant, urology, and
transplant pharmacology (their shared language is quite different from the
bones group); endocrinology (they just talk to themselves; nephrology will
nod along sometimes); internal medicine and cardiology & thoracic
medicine (they speak the same language, but can't use it to agree on
anything); infectious diseases (the prophets of doom) and outpatient
pharmacy. I found that I could ask the "dumb questions" to get layperson-
level answers, ostensibly for my own benefit, but it let the specialists
understand and talk about cross-effects that on their own, they might
have missed since their egos don't allow them to ask for a plain-language
explanation. |
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The design of the human body was clearly a
government-backed job. Too complicated and
involving everyone's favorite pet project organ,
organelle, system, and some with clearly no function
at all, or even opposing functions. Mass
simplification is
required. |
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