I'm Dr. Joshua Schwimmer, a nephrologist and internal medicine physician in New York City. • Kidney Notes was the first active nephrology blog. (Trivia: Kidney Notes is so old that the National Library of Medicine still uses it as an example of how to formally cite blogs.) • Professionally, you can find me at Kidney.nyc. • Kidney Notes is for educational purposes only, not medical advice. Consult qualified health care professionals. See disclaimer.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

The Well Placed Medical "?!"

Doctors write lots of question marks in medical charts. We don't write "?!" enough. I had the opportunity recently, after an elderly woman with pneumonia in the ICU was found to unexpectedly have a parasite on her blood smear.

"Malaria?!" I wrote.

Sometimes it's exactly the right punctuation mark.