The House Officer's Changing World

Abstract

WE middle-aged and older physicians are smug about our house-staff days — the days when medical giants roamed the hospital halls day and night. We prepared and stained our own blood smears, performed white-cell counts and differentials, actually looked through a microscope at our patients' urine, gram-stained sputum smears, determined circulation times, and measured venous pressures. Invasive procedures consisted of lumbar punctures, paracenteses, thoracenteses, liver biopsies, pleural biopsies, sigmoidoscopies, and bone marrow aspirations. We worked in private hospitals and in gloomy non-air-conditioned city and Veterans Administration hospitals. Patients were crowded together on large, open wards, where the nurses could see . . .