An Inexpensive Patient-encounter Log

Developing an educational reminder system for a handheld encounter log.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Medical students increasingly log patient encounters on handheld computers. Detailed patient records captured at the bedside would allow these log programs to complement medical education with automated reminders. We evaluated progress toward this goal. METHODS A series of electronic student encounter logs (ESEL) were designed to quickly record common diagnoses in a ...

Behavioral Sciences Training Applications of a Computerized Student-Patient Encounter Log System

Rethinking the difficult patient encounter.

Laura is a 49-year-old woman with posttraumatic stress disorder and chronic headaches who takes 200 mg of morphine twice daily and is in an electric wheelchair for no clear reason. Peter is a 53-year-old, morbidly obese man with poorly controlled Type 2 diabetes mellitus. Despite multiple visits focusing on lifestyle changes and medication adjustments, his A1C remains wildly uncontrolled and hi...

Early Clinical Encounter: Report of an Intervention

Introduction. Encountering clinical environments as an inseparable part of studying medicine could bring about tension and anxiety for medical students. Early clinical exposure has been suggested in order to decrease these stresses and to motivate students for a better attitude and awareness. This study was performed to determine the effect of a short-term period of exposing to clinical envi...

Humor in the physician-patient encounter.

M edicine is serious business, but physicians have always tried to balance the heavier aspects of their work with humor and lightness. Hippocrates, for example, wrote that physicians should cultivate a serious and respectable image, but at the same time he advised them to use wit in interacting with their patients because “dourness is repulsive both to the healthy and to the sick.” While humor ...