Myopia II

I'm getting rather frustrated with the way O&G is run at my hospital. The lecturers keep emphasising clinical exposure time and time again since that's where the examination questions are. Yet, there are so many lectures scattered throughout the day that it's almost impossible to do so. It's my third day in NICU and I've only been able to attend one ward round and spent but a few hours with the Residents; the rest of the time we have lectures and tutorials.

A 2nd year medical student approached me recently. He knew my background in Medical Imaging and asked me to deliver a lecture on the topic to his cohort only at our hospital, as it would be impossible for me to go to every other clinical school. I agreed to start with a lecture on Imaging the Brain, the first of which I delivered yesterday. I will deliver it again tomorrow as the year is divided into 2 groups attending clinical days at different times.

I attended a lecture today on Uterine fibroids among other things and was actively thinking about Radiology as well. And I remembered a very peculiar instance of "myopia" that I experienced during my General Practice term.

It was the afternoon of a cold day early last month and we saw a young lady with concerns about irregular periods and heavy bleeding. Without going into all the details, we decided to refer her for Ultrasonography to assess the uterus, adnexa and pelvis.

A few days later, she presented with the results - images and report from the Radiology consultant. The GP discussed the results, which were normal and provided some options for symptomatic relief along with further investigations.

After the consultation had finished, he handed me the report and asked me to read it. Double check it for me will you?

So I did. It's a normal report.

He started laughing and said read the top of it again. I was confused initially and then it sunk in:

Thank you for referring this very attractive uterus for sonographic investigation of her heavy menstrual bleeding and irregular cycles.

He picked up the phone and asked to be put through to the reporting consultant.

I'm going to fax you a report you did a day or so ago on one of my patients. Please read it and call me back when you've finished.

Presumably the radiologist asked what was wrong with the report. Just have a read of it and let me know what you think.

We faxed it across. About 10 minutes later we got a call back from him.

Laughing, he said Shit... I'm sorry about that.

No problems, so long as the findings are correct. The GP shook his head.

You'll be thinking about that one for a while, won't you? And I definitely will be.

Losing sight of the objective can be so easy sometimes...