BOSTON, MA – Making no attempt to hide his obvious displeasure in what was a “late” and “totally bogus” consult, infectious diseases fellow Luke O’Cytosis just ended his note with the terse “Thanks for the sh*tty consult” before signing his name and pager number.
“Not only did the primary team call me at 6:55 PM with this consult, but they also said it was ‘urgent’ because the patient is febrile with a white count,” fumed O’Cytosis, who was already inundated with 50 new consults today. “You know what it was? Horsesh*t.” O’Cytosis pointed out that the patient was neither febrile nor with a white count. The patient wasn’t even on any antibiotics with which he could tinker. “Useless, totally useless consult.”
O’Cytosis isn’t the first health care professional to field a soft, bogus, or inappropriate consult. However, he is the first to not swallow his or her own pride and write “Thank you for the interesting consult” no matter how uninteresting the consult actually is.
Legal experts and medical records frown upon the use of curse words when documenting in patient charts, especially the word “pu**y” when “purulent” should be used instead. Some nonsense about professionalism supposedly. Whatevs.
Screwed-over consultants applaud O’Cytosis’ bravery.
“Look, everyone wants to write what he wrote but no one has ever been brave enough, so you have to respect that,” explained hospitalist Tameka Jones. “When Ortho calls me for medical management on a patient without any medical problems to manage, you don’t know how bad I want to write ‘Thanks for the sh*tty consult.’ Or if I call Cards to see an 18-year old with clearly reproducible musculoskeletal chest pain, I know they badly want to write the same thing to me. But we don’t. Luke did. Good for him!”
Gomerblog has checked in once more on O’Cytosis’ consult note and it looks like he made an addendum. “Signing off. Please do not call with any more stupid-a** sh*t.”
