Radiologist Drafted Into Direct Patient Care, Forced to Perform Own Clinical Correlation

San Diego, CA – When Dr. Tyler Bachon started his radiology residency, he thought clinical correlation would only be a phrase he added to reports as a means of putting the onus of the diagnosis back onto other physicians and midlevels. 

This week, due to Coronavirus, Dr. Bachon was pulled out of his usual dark reading room and thrust into duty as an auxiliary internal medicine intern. The transition was a shock to him to say the least. 

“I haven’t looked at lab results for over a decade, I don’t know about what normal sodium levels should be! This is the worst idea ever!” Dr. Bachon lamented. 

On the third day of his purgatory, Dr. Bachon and the IM team reached what they thought was a mutually beneficial compromise. Bachon would read all imaging studies for the team and would no longer have to do H&Ps, daily notes or try to figure out where the hell sodium goes in the lab skeleton diagrams. 

The plan went great until Dr. Bachon saw a possible bilateral hazy opacity on a morning chest xray and recommended clinical correlation for possible pneumonia or Coronavirus. It was at that moment that Bachon realized that he would have to perform that clinical correlation!

“I don’t know how to clinically correlate! I’m a god-damn radiologist, not a stethoscopologist! I don’t know what pneumonia sounds like or smells like. This is bull dookie!” Bachon complained. 

Bachon was later seen offering an actual IM Intern a protein bar he had stolen from an orthopaedic surgeon in exchange for performing a clinical correlation.