CEREBROSPINALECTOMY
Self-checkout: "Unexpected item in the bagging area." Me: "There is no item." Self-checkout: "Please wait for assistance." Attendant, touching nothing: "Try now." Me: "Ma'am, that was a neurology consult." Neurology consults look like nothing is happening, because most of the diagnostic work is history and bedside examination rather than a procedure. The value is in the looking. Somebody arrives, changes no settings, touches no equipment, and the problem resolves — and the note takes forty minutes. Send this to whoever paged you for "no acute change." Send this to whoever pages you for "no acute change."
EXPLAINED (ACCURACY-CHECKED)
The great majority of a neurologic consultation's diagnostic yield comes from history and bedside examination rather than from a procedure or bedside intervention; observation and localization ARE the intervention.
Established clinical practice; the primacy of history and examination in neurologic diagnosis is standard teaching and not a contested claim.
PERMANENT LINK
https://cerebrospinalectomy.com/jokes/self-checkout-unexpected-item-in-the-bagging-area/
https://cerebrospinalectomy.com/jokes/self-checkout-unexpected-item-in-the-bagging-area/
Reprint anywhere, non-commercially, with attribution to cerebrospinalectomy.com. We punch at specialties, the system, and ourselves — never at patients.