This incident happened a few years ago, during a master health check up that routinely takes place in all the hospitals.
It was time for my lunch and I was heading to cafeteria and on the way I was approached by a middle aged male patient, with ultrasound report in his hand. Every person who enrols for master health check up, would undergo ultrasound test and since we had just one day reserved(every friday) for this exclusive health check up, we would be greeted by crowd of people every friday morning, even before 9am. Usually, our consultations would begin at 9am everyday. The sonologist who was called for this every friday, would remain too busy the first half of the day. He was not available for the second half of the day so all ultrasound tests were lined up for the day in the morning, including those of in-patients too if any docs had advised one. The sonologist would quickly examine the abdomen and would dictate the findings to his assistant who would type out the report. I guess they had this template ready to enter the findings, to save the time.
Coming to this patient, he requested me to have a look at his report and passed on the report to me. He followed me to my consultation room. As I was going through his report, I paused for a moment to ask if it was his report. He quickly answered back saying yes. I just asked him again to be double sure that it was his report. Now he got a lil tensed and asked why I was so doubtful about his report. I just smiled and asked him to wait in the consultation room and that I would be back in moment. As I was heading to the diagnostics dept, I was greeted by our X-ray technician, quickly returning his greet I asked who was incharge of typing Ultrasound reports. He quickly said” It’s me madam” with a big smile on his face. I smiled back and asked him to go through the report that I was holding in my hands.
He went through the report and looked at me, he hadn’t noticed what was actually wrong with report. He smiled again and said”Madam what’s wrong?”. I then pointed at the mistake in the report. Its a male patient, yet the particulars here in the report said”Uterus and ovaries normal !!!!” Now after reading the same he burst out laughing. I laughed too, but now I remembered that the patient was waiting in the consultation room for me and so I asked him to quickly edit the report again and send it across to the consultation room. He then said”Sorry madam, there was a mistake in the editing!”. ” Had the patient came to know about this, he would have got the shock of his life!!!” I exclaimed. He laughed again and quickly rushed to his chamber to get it corrected.
I came back to my consultation room, and the patient was now anxiously looking at me. I smiled and told him that his report was perfectly fine but there was a small error, that required correction and so had sent it back. Few mins passed, the technician rushed to my room with the new report and asked me to go through again. I went through and assured him it was all fine now. The wait was over and I handed over the report to this patient and said again that he had no issues whatsoever and he could leave.
I left my consultation room smiling and this incident I remember to this day….
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