It’s not unexpected to get so distracted by the everyday work in medicine that we forget about getting better at practicing medicine itself. And we humans are excellent at making excuses.
To avoid this, I ask myself a simple question every week:
What disease has been added to my diagnostic repertoire? What disease can I diagnose now that I could not readily diagnose last week?
To answer that question, I need to know the context: the “who,” the “when,” and the “what.”
- Who is my patient? Is the patient demographically consistent with the diagnosis?
- When should I suspect this particular disease?
- What should I do next to diagnose the disease?
PS: This week I read about and learned FOP (fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva), as we recently admitted on our ward a young man with FOP due to inability to open his jaw and swallow.
