Who’s responsible for the overuse of CT scans in the ER? GruntDoc says the blame should be spread around:
Want to admit a patient with pancreatitis to the Internal Medicine service? “What’s the CT show?” is the admitting teams’ question. Us: Didn’t get one; had it before, has it again, patient states it feels just like their last pancreatitis flare-up. “Get a CT and call me back” is the usual refrain, and another ED doc gets dinged for an’unnecessary CT’, and the admitting team can cluck about the number of scans ordered in the ED. It’s not only the ED docs who are responsible for increased use of scans.
Related posts:
- Too many CT scans?
- CT scans will go on
- The quality of CT and MRI scans vary, and how old machines can affect the treatment course
- Cardiac scans are being overused
- CT scans
- How many more scans are doctors ordering today?
- Cardiac CT scans
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Grunt Doc is right but for the wrong reason.
“Evidence Based Medicine” has so corrupted medical education that doctors who actually think (as opposed to applying algorythms) are consider “outside the mainstream.”
So when someone does not know what to do, the answer is always “get more data” instead of “think and figure this out.”
This is not just an ER problem – IM and hospitalists (like me) are also to blame. It’s not any one specialty’s fault – it’s the fault of a society that values meaningless data more than carefully reasoned conclusions.
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