The dreaded DD: diagnostic doubt. The intangible stress that earns doctors the big bucks. (Omit the fact that 1/2 of the doctors on our course earn a wage below the Canadian ‘poverty line’, either because of their country of origin, or long-term dedication to global health.)
No matter what you’re stage of training, diagnostic doubt is what haunts you when you (guiltily) try to leave work on time, when you’re juggling the acute needs of multiple patients; when you’re off-duty, but your brain is still stubbornly “on-duty.”
In resource-limited settings, one might find themselves in an uncomfortable “jack/jill-of-all-trades” position where doctor = phlebotomist/microbiologist/pathologist/radiologist combined.
One of the objectives of the course is to bring a high standard of care to regions of the world that might not have access to tools we often take for granted in high-resource settings.
Here are some snapshots of us sweating laboriously over microscopes and xray images… down with DD(!)
With much diagnostic diligence and love,
Doctor A-squared
[slideshow]
Dearest Annie – Have a great time and keep posting so I can have something to look forward to on my study break 😛