From: [log in to unmask]
> Thornton's Law: The more family members appear for care on the same visit, the less likely any of them are ill.


--> Doc Holiday's Corollary to Thornton's Law: The more family members appear for care on the same visit, WHEN A SUBTLE AND RELEVANT PATHOLOGY IS ACTUALLY THERE, the more likely it is that this pathology will be missed and, when the brown stuff hits the fan, one will be blamed for being negligent and ignoring its potential presence MERELY BECAUSE OF THAT NUMBER...


And, NO, I am NOT any smarter than Thornton's Law. It used to be MY law as well and I did well with it until the day, when I was a registrar and I got a call from the local consultant in Communicable Disease Control, asking me why my ED sent home a family of 6 with Scombroid Poisoning, without preventing the who-knows-how-many-cases they then got from the same restaurant in other EDs... The doctor who had seen them only hours before had actually commented to his colleagues in the ED on how he had had to "educate" a family who all thought they became allergic to something on the same day...


Of course, that doctor was me... ;-)


That's how I first "discovered" Scombroid Poisoning...


Not to mention the good ol' "monoxide families" at the beginning of winter. Actually we had such a family here just a week ago, but they were all perfectly OK despite the exposure...


But it's a good Law most other times!


Upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 Optimised for MSN.