Short and Sweet, Please.

I have a VERY short attention span.

This makes me a great playmate for Cole. In fact, sometimes Cole's attention span outlasts mine, like when he wants me to read the same book to him 4 times in a row, or when he wants to build the same tower and knock it down again over and over and over.

It also makes me a good ER doctor. Most ER doctors have short attention spans. We want to get in, get to the bottom line and keep going.

It would not, however, make me a good radiologist. Radiologists are a different breed. They sit in their dark room and spend a long time analyzing and describing an image that can usually be summed up in a few words.

What's frustrating to me and my short attention span is that if I want to get the official radiologist read on an x-ray, I can't just skim a report to get to the "impression" (the succinct summation of the bottom line). I have to call the dictation line, punch in a bunch of numbers, and then listen to the radiologist drone on, rattling off the study ordered, patient name, date, procedure, and then painstakingly detailing every little finding (usually in a slow unhurried tone) until they finally get to the point. In a busy ER, who has time for that? I can't tell you how many times I'll look at one of my colleagues with their ear stuck in the phone and a frustrated look on their face... waiting for one of these long dictations to meander through the long, circuitous description and finally get to the impression. Really, they should just start out with the "impression" and spare us all.

Below is an example of why these radiology dictations are so painful to listen to, excerpted directly from a radiologist's report of an abdominal film at my hospital. This wasn't actually my patient. A PA printed out the the report and brought it to me for a chuckle. I did find it very amusing that radiologist who dictated this couldn't just say "Belly Button Ring."

"A curvilinear metallic radiodensity overlies the region of the umbilicus and likely represents an umbilical adornment."

Just GET TO THE POINT already!