Review of TV show "The Good Doctor"

Just when you thought there could not be another bad medical show, ABC TV presents “The Good Doctor.” It’s about an autistic young man going to California to become a surgical resident.

Just after he lands at the airport in San Jose, an overhead sign breaks and causes the unluckiest 8-year-old boy on earth to suffer three life-threatening injuries. The Good Doctor gives a bystander, who sort of sounds like a doctor but is not too confident, an anatomy lesson about where to hold pressure on a bleeding internal jugular vein. He then notices bulging of the left arm veins and diagnoses a tension pneumothorax.

He looks for a knife “with a seven-inch blade” at a TSA checkpoint, grabs a lesser knife, makes a chest tube and underwater seal from various supplies he finds in the airport, dumps half a bottle of whiskey on the kid’s chest, and inserts the makeshift tube. All of this happens on the floor of the airport concourse.

Of course the kid wakes up and starts breathing normally.

Meanwhile the board of directors of the hospital is debating the hiring of an autistic surgical resident. In this hospital, its president, who met The Good Doctor when he was 14, hires the residents, and the chief of surgery has no input. [Matching? What matching?]

Contradictory evaluations cause trouble, consternation

Two weeks ago I blogged about a resident who had been told she must repeat her fourth year of training. She countered with a lawsuit claiming that the surgery department and the medical school did not follow their policies in mandating her remediation.

She said written evaluations by faculty during her fourth year of residency were generally very good, but some oral feedback she received was negative.

From my experience as a surgical residency program director, I know inconsistent, vague, and unhelpful evaluations from faculty are common. For example, a medical student on Twitter recently posted the following:

The tweet prompted many comments from others; the best of which are these [names changed]:

That he seems well read and has a good depth of knowledge deprives him of good learning opportunities.

John sometimes stands too close when he presents. 3 months later. I don't understand why John stands so far away when he presents.

Tends to scare off new people./Makes everyone feel welcome & appreciated.

Dr. Doe, don't be too hard on the juniors. One week later. Dr. Doe, don't be too friendly to the juniors.

And my favorite

Jane should be aware of how she holds her shoulders. It changes the energy in the room.

Do you have similar evaluations to share?

Thanks to Natalie Wall (@nataliemwall) for allowing me to use her tweet.

A surgical resident’s legal battle with her program

My new post on Physician's Weekly is about a dispute between a resident and her surgical residency program that has escalated to court and the news media. Click here to read it.

The power of a photo in a tweet

Last week I did a little experiment on Twitter. No, I did not have IRB approval.

I wanted to see what the impact of attaching a photo to a tweet would be.

On August 30 at 10 a.m., I tweeted a link to a blog post I had just written about two new types of water—one that supposedly has “activated stabilized oxygen” in it and another that is “living crystal” water. Both are touted as having health benefits.

Here are the first tweet and its statistics.

Click on photo to enlarge it.

Of the 1299 impressions or unique Twitter accounts that could have been reached at 10 AM the time the tweet was posted, 11 (0.8%) people engaged with the tweet.

Three hours later I tweeted about the blog post again using similar wording but this time adding this photograph from the blog post.

Here are the tweet and its statistics.