Doc's Progress Notes
Week of October 30, 2000
Last Updated: 11/05/2000 at 7:35 PM PST
Monday Tuesday
Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Most Recent Update
Busy Monday today. My meeting with our medical director went well. I do not need to make any major changes in the way I practice, my patient satisfaction scores are high, and my colleagues think I am an excellent physician and a good partner. It is always nice to hear compliments, too often I hear only the negative.
After my evaluation, it was time to make hospital rounds. One of the patients was someone I had never seen but was signed up with me. He had a Transient Ischemic Attack Friday evening and came to the hospital. A TIA is a light stroke with no permanent damage. An ultrasound of his arteries in his neck, which supply blood to the brain, revealed that he had high grade blockage on the side that the TIA occurred on. For that reason, he had surgery today, right after I met him, to remove that blockage and prevent him from having a major stroke with permanent damage. He was doing well postoperatively when I left this evening.
The rest of my day went OK. I had a lot of phone calls to answer throughout the day and a lot of charts to review as two of my partners were off today, both will be back tomorrow. I still have some lab work to formally file tomorrow but I looked at all of it this evening and it can all wait until tomorrow.
I did not file all the lab work this evening because tonight's game was the last junior varsity game of the year for my son. His team pulled out a win tonight against the junior varsity of the team that beat their varsity Friday night. He was happy after the game tonight. The varsity has one more regular season game Thursday night, rather than Friday as scheduled, then, if they win, they will be in the playoffs starting next week. I think Stephen is ready for football season to be over as he is tired of being on the scout team each week. A few days after the season is over he will begin missing it again, however.
That's it for tonight! Tomorrow is a long day with call tomorrow night. Have a safe Halloween everyone.
No update.
As you can probably tell, I was busy last night. I got home to bed sometime around midnight then had two admissions after midnight. Sleep was very fragmented last night and I am paying for that now. No bad medical problems as a result of last night being Halloween that I am aware of.
The "G0-Live" for our group's electronic medical record system was today. Everything went very smoothly it appears. The training for everyone over the last couple of weeks appears to have paid off. I was available for support today, on my day off, but there weren't many questions. I did get my desk at work cleaned off, at least for a couple of days. Tomorrow, I will be back to seeing patients with a two hour interruption for a meeting by video teleconferencing.
Stacey has her first sports related injury. She has a jammed finger on her left hand which is now taped to the one next to it. That means she will be unable to play the violin for a couple of days but will be able to continue practicing with her basketball team. She also got her first pair of glasses today. She looks really good in them. Stephen has already made the required four eyes jokes but she really likes them. She told me tonight that the streetlights really aren't fuzzy all the time.
Stephen's football team plays their crosstown rival tomorrow night. On the line for his team is a trip to the playoffs. The other high school is playing only for pride. It should be a good game and it is not supposed to be played in the rain. Last year's game was played in a heavy downpour which lead to many fumbles and dropped passes. I will try to get an update up tomorrow night but no promises.
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For a little catch-up, Stephen's team did beat their crosstown rivals Thursday night and so play in the playoffs Tuesday night. They drew a team from the Seattle area that defeated the team that won their league championship undefeated. Stephen said the league champion had several injured starters that night but when healthy managed to go undefeated in their league. They beat Stephen's team here but it was a close game. It may be a better game Tuesday night than it looks at first glance. Stephen's team does have an injured quarterback; he hurt his right thumb which is his nonthrowing hand. Otherwise, they should be at full strength. The game is being played in Lacey, which is just over an hour north of here so we are going to go to the game. It is not supposed to be raining, just cool.
The first three days using the electronic medical record software have gone very smoothly. There have been over eight hundred prescriptions written by our group during that time and they all have all gone out electronically, either printed or faxed directly from the computer system. The pharmacies are reporting that the prescriptions are much clearer and easier to read. The patients are enjoying it since most of the prescriptions are filled and ready for them when they get to the pharmacy. The physicians, even the ones who were reluctant to use the system, have been very enthusiastic now that they have used it.
Tomorrow night I am on call again. Delanae and I are also scheduled to go to a dinner for a candidate for an open physician assistant's slot in our group. I should be able to put in an appearance and hopefully get some food to eat before I have to leave. I had forgotten about being on call Monday night when I volunteered to participate in the dinner interview.
I have only one patient in the hospital as of now. He is a man with a severe dementia due to alcohol abuse and multiple strokes. He is aggressive toward staff and other patients in the nursing home that he has been living in. He is in the hospital to try and get him on a medication regimen that will allow him to go back there. We have so far been unsuccessful in that attempt and are trying to get him into a geriatric psychiatric center north of here. At the present time, he is a danger to the other patients and staff. The combination of alcohol and multiple strokes makes for severe dementia and aggressive behavior.
That about does it for tonight. I probably won't be able to do an update tomorrow night or Tuesday. Maybe I can get back on track Wednesday. See you later.
