During the seventh hour of internal medicine rounds one day, Dr. Frownalot had an intriguing idea. After hearing the resident present a patient with hypertension mentioned as the first problem, “Lymes” as the sixth, and an ejection fraction of 5% as the eleventh and presumably least significant, the futility of rounds finally dawned on him.
“In the past, when people didn’t know what to do, they just slaughtered animals and hoped for the best. I felt like I could relate,” he was quoted as saying.
He had 25 goats brought into the hospital, and sent to live in the residents’ room. Every morning, instead of rounding on the patients, each goat would be cleaned with chlorhexidine in the most meticulous sterile technique possible, and then it was introduced to the team.
“This is a 16 month old male, with a past medical history of Groat’s Disease,” the intern would announce. The chief resident would then spend 15 minutes attempting to place an IV into the goat, so that they could be sure that its electrolytes were replenished.
After this had been done, the team would proceed to discuss the evidence regarding the mortality benefit of goat magnesium replenishment. Without fail, the goat would then die of boredom within the hour.
“You know, when they first had this idea, I thought it was crazy, and flew in the face of everything we learned in Introduction to Clinical Medicine!” said an eager third year med student. “But the patients actually haven’t been doing any worse. Who would’ve thought?”
GomerBlog’s crack investigative reporting staff reached out to one of the goats for comment. Miraculously, the goat was able to speak fluent English:
“You know, I used to think that just eating grass and pooping all day was kind of boring, but compared to what these schmucks have to go through every morning, it’s like riding a rollercoaster! And I’m a goat, for crying out loud!”
