Friday Night Wine-Buzz. Ask me anything...

Helped along with a little Sativa...

I love you all...

Anyone else nice and high now?

Can any of our Hispanic DU-ers help me with a question?

I have a very large Hispanic patient population, not all of whom speak English. I use a Spanish interpreter for their visits, and I'm working on improving my own Spanish, as well.

My Hispanic patients all seem to demonstrate a peculiar anomaly that doesn't feature in patients of other ethnicities: they invariably refer to any symptom they come in complaining of as 'dizziness'. When I question them as to the symptoms and the history of their current problem, the symptom tends to be the furthest thing from dizziness; headache, stomach pain, diarrhea, whatever.

Any idea why everything is described as 'dizziness'?

One of my staff assistants told me that Hispanic patients are instructed (by whom? Friends? Family members?) to tell the medical provider that they have dizziness, regardless of the actual medical complaint. But my assistant isn't Hispanic herself, and I wondered if this was misinformation, or prejudice, or what.

I want to be better at evaluating and treating my patients, especially if there is a language barrier.

Anyone have any answers for this?

Clinical pet peeve: if I ask you "How long has this been going on?", don't say "A minute".

Unless it has been going on for sixty seconds. All right?

I know "about a minute" is a current idiom for " a while now, a bit". But when I'm trying to fix your medical problem, please be a little more specific.

Argh!

Happy Pride Month! From a straight ally, and proud of it!

Friday Night Wine-Buzz. Ask me anything.

I love you all...

Happy Friday, everyone!

I've had three patients so far this week who came in to the clinic complaining of pneumonia.

Really? In this weather? Days: hot and dry; nights: warm and dry.

I look them over. Sure enough: common garden-variety cold symptoms. Not even a hint of pneumonia. I treated them symptomatically.

Do they say they have pneumonia because they think that sounds more dramatic? What gives?

How is everyone's Monday going?

Me, I could have used a longer weekend...

Anyone heard from In-The-Wind?

Haven't seen her around lately.