…otherwise known as “buffing the chart”: “Medicine has two faces: the iodine-stained, glass-splintered messy reality we all work in, and the clean, quiet, dignified prose we use to record it for posterity. No absence of order penetrates our documents of record. The journals’ glossy pages – or, now, neat online screens – are serene and pristine, rational and assured. Every study has a conclusion. Every case has a diagnosis. Every necessary test is performed, without fuss or muss.

If there has been any drama finding a vein, or cajoling a claustrophobic patient into the M.R.I. scanner, or debating a practicing pagan who is refusing his blood tests because the moon is waxing gibbous, you certainly aren’t going to read about it in the literature. Yet, it all happens, all of that and more.” (New York Times)