It was Sunday, and I had a bit more energy than was good for me. Our house was swimming in post-holiday clutter, and we desperately needed additional storage space. I spied my rusty 5-drawer filing cabinet tucked into the corner of the garage. It was crammed with 2 decades’ worth of papers, covering everything from “Death and Dying” to “A Hemodynamic Approach to the Treatment of Heart Failure” (I’m a general internist). But it’s 2012, and we’re fully wired, so, really, what’s the point of all those papers? They seemed to be just taking up space that was needed for other important items, such as Legos and sports paraphernalia.I wheeled over the big blue bin, fully intending to dump all of the files and get rid of the cabinet. But then I started thumbing through the articles: “The Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) Trial,” “A Comparison of Enalapril with Hydralazine-Isosorbide Dinitrate in the Treatment of Chronic Congestive Heart Failure,” and “A Practical Approach to Acid-base Disorders,” to name a few. Then there were the compilation handouts, put together by bright and enthusiastic colleagues and faculty: Dr SK on beta-blockers and congestive heart failure (1997), Dr CG on infections of the central nervous system (1990), Dr MS with a summary of the key articles on vasodilator therapy in congestive heart failure (1997), and my own handouts—erudite, user-friendly, and completely illegible (pre-word processing)!
–To read this article in its entirety, please visit our website.
–Charlie Goldberg, MD
–This article originally appeared in the November 2012 issue of The American Journal of Medicine.
