Patient Write-up Writer's Blank

[Thyroid Storm]

I need your help, please.

I'm a CC3 on medicine currently and I love it! I love talking about patients, diagnoses, mechanisms, treatments and I will most likely go into medicine, BUT whenever I have to do a 10-15 page monstrosity (aka writeup), I just shut down.

Take today (Saturday) as an example - I get up at 6am to work on this POS, drive out to a neighboring 24-hr coffee shop for breakfast/caffeine, come back by 7am and sit down at my desk, open Word and ... I check email, read the news, review my notes and pretty much do anything but work on the writeup.

Does anybody have any suggestions on strategies that would help me keep focused, disciplined and actually get this thing done in a couple of hours?

Many thanks,

-TS

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[fang]

I also am a terribe procrastinator. The earlier it occurs to me that putting off the work now means hours of sleep-deprived pain later on, the faster I get started. My medicine write-ups were also 10 - 15 pages, but it gets easier once you've done a few... use a template for the physical exam and ROS, and get the objective data part done as fast as you can so you can spend a lot of time on the A/P.

good luck!

 

[JulianCrane]

I know exactly how you feel. I just finished medicine, and boy was I glad to be done with those writeups. Hang in there. It gets easier as you go along, especially as you find out what the person reading your writeups expects of you.

 

[KidDr]

10 to 15 PAGES??? what in the world?!?

 

[Thyroid Storm]

Thank you for the support. After wasting a whole day doing nothing, I finally got to work today. I think the 10-15 pages "suggested" by my preceptor made (and still makes) me feel very anxious and hence the writer's block. I think I just have to start with the idea that a crappy first effort is better than having nothing. Big blow to my perfectionist ego, but I'll try to suck it up.

 

[Anka]

Hopefully 10-15 pages double spaced (ours are 5 pages single spaced). After struggling through the first few, I settled into working through the HPI first, then the assessment and plan. The HPI can be fun to write, because that's the story. The assessment and plan helps because the DDx will help focus which physical exam findings to include (I use a template for a standard "normal" exam, but it wouldn't include pertinent negatives to say "I don't think this is scleroderma" if that's somewhere in the differential). My preceptors generally liked that my physical exam was very closely related to the DDx.

Anyhow, it does get easier with time, and if you don't go into medicine you can console yourself with the fact that you won't be doing this BS for too much longer!

Best,
Anka

 

[jdh71]

These "write-ups" are something I've never encountered. Guess it sucks to be you guys . . .