I decided today to check out what other bloggers had put up on the web. With this"blogger.com" site it is just ridiculously easy to randomly pop in and out of people's sites. It's pretty damn interesting out there. The highlight by far was a blog of this American couple in Holland who just had a baby! It's kind of hard to imagine thematic matieral more compelling than the entry into the world of a new human life. The rest of the blog offerings run the gamut from interesting notes on life to....well, to a lot of stuff that is pretty--what the word?--lame. I noticed two trends of note: people whose blogs say something like "Go away and don't read" and blogs that are purely commercial/informational. The latter are simply uninteresting, but the former are (to my refined tastes) nauseating. Implicit in the act of blogging is the possibility/hope/expectation/conceit that someone will read one's writings. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous. It made me think about the purpose of my own blog. Despite the title, it certainly is not nautical in nature. Nor, barring some startling and unexpected life changes, do I anticipate it ever will be. It will be pretty muuch the unfocused musings of a 30 year old MD in California. As purposes go that's pretty modest, but....I think that's about right. I expect it will be heavy on medical topics because with the exception of my girlfriend (and now that the Tour is over and Lance has retired) that is the facet of my life that has the greatest hold on my psyche. Also, I think the world of medicine, particularly Emergency Medicine (note the capitalization affirms its rightful place in the House of Medicine) is pretty damn interesting. Having so said, let me enthrall you with a tale of my 2.125 patient per hour day! Eight hour shift (took me 8:40 to get out because of a infurniating radiology screw up! This would have been my first chance to leave work on time! Damn Radiology!). Okay, this obsession (for such I mjust admit it is) with my patient per hour (pph) stats is, I realize, of no interest to anyone. But for me it is of paramount importance! I work in a partnership where we basically eat what we kill. (Yes, a poor metaphor for doctors...fogive me). Think of us as a primitive tribe of Paleolithic hunters on the African plains--stalking the elusive Medicare reimbursement. Some hunters are strong and some are weak--and the weak are kept alive by the efforts of the strong. As the new guy I am aware of my weak status and feel tremendous pressure to get as strong as possible as quickly as possible. It's not right for the better docs to take less money home to their families because I'm an incompetent screw up. So, a 2.25 pph day is satisfying--after two months it's only my second shift on the right side of the 1.7 pph line that seems to separate the strong from the weak. The astute among you, or those nursing a cold, will have realized that in my brief discussion of Strong and Weak MD's, no mention is made of actual provision of patient care. More on this later, but for now...Welcome to American Medicine! U-561, M.D.