Dr. Schmitt Rules

I've been a hospitalist for a number of months now . . . for a little hospital down East . . . mostly high-risk nursery work . . . covering C-Sections and stabilizing/transporting the sicker wee-ones . . . but this coming week my duties are going to expand into helping a local health department get a new part-time Pediatric clinic off the ground.

I'm actually kind of excited to be getting back into a clinic. I've missed it.

The hospital and clinic have treated me exceptionally well. They know good Pediatricians are not a "dime-a-dozen".

Tonight, as I watch a Ghost-Whisperer re-run, I am sitting here taking two textbooks apart and putting them back together in plastic sleeves and notebooks. The books are "Barton Schmitt's Instructions For Pediatric Patients" in both English and Spanish. And I have found them invaluable in terms of helping parents cope with one problem or another. You simply take a page out of the notebook, copy it, and give it to the parent. That's how the book is designed.

As opposed to the three or four times I've done this in the past (for other clinics), these are my own books. I found them in one of the 100+ boxes I unpacked last week in order to stock the new bookcases in my new home library/office.

In some cases, opening a box was like opening Christmas presents.

I always carry a small Pediatric library in the trunk of my car. And I am going to let the clinic use these books. But they are mine. I'm not going to do this again. It's quite tedious to do this over and over again.

But it's more than worth it. Dr. Schmitt rules.