What kind of sick do you has?

At the moment my job is kind of strange.  I do nothing but admit people to hospital.  I make some decisions about the immediate treatment and investigations but after that they aren't my responsibility any more.

It's bad in that I have to make an effort to follow the patients after that to find out whether or not I got things completely wrong (more on that another time).  But it's good in that I get a nice look at a representative cross-section of all the people who are getting sick and coming in to hospital, so I learn a fair bit.

For example, yesterday I admitted:

• a little old lady who got a urinary tract infection (UTI) and fell down,
• a little old lady who got a UTI and fell down,
• a little old lady who got pneumonia and fell down,
• a little old man who got a UTI and fell down,
• a little old man who got both a UTI and pneumonia (but he didn't fall down), and
• a little old lady who fell down.

I'm not convinced that this is preparing me well for the physician's exam in 2 years time, but I suspect it is good background for my Plan B of being a GP.  Also, I've decided that when I get old (ie: in about 5 years time) I'm just going to munch down on trimethoprim and amoxicillin for breakfast every day, just in case.