Hey all,
Thought that I would throw this one out there. Rotations are starting to loom, so I'm trying to get everything lined up way before the actual start date. I'm looking for some suggestions for a pocket binder that would fit in the pocket of a lab coat to write down all those little pearls of wisdom that I come across. The kicker though is that I need to be able to add and subtract material as needed. I've looked at the Circa and Rollabind material, but was wondering if there was anything else out there. open to suggestions from anyone, especially if you happen to have just completed medical rotations yourself. Would love to hear what worked, what didn't and what you would do again/different. Thanks

Jeremy

How about a Hipster PDA using 3x5 index cards? There are heaps of variations out there. For instance Levenger makes a leather "pocket briefcases" to hold 3x5s. I personally use a Moleskine pocket-size Memo Pocket to hold 3x5s (although I'm not in medicine).

Yep that is my suggestion too.

I have seen in Walmart a little mini binder ( maybe 5" x 3") that has about 6 rings inside. That might be what you are lookingfor but I won't vouch for FP friendly paper.

Kurt

3X5s are cheaper, but Circa is more durable, and just more classy IMHO

Although I'm not a med student, I second the Circa recco. I'm a big fan myself.

The levenger shirt pocket briefcase works nice (http://www.levenger.com/PAGETEMPLATES/PRODUCT/Product.asp?Params=category=11-76|level=2-3|pageid=2398|Special=fes|Lnk=txt), I use one myself although it's a little big for a shirt pocket IMHO, but works out nice in a white coat. If I was you I would take notes down on the 3x5 card and then later on enter the data in a PDA in a word file.

Dean

MS3 here.

At the beginning I thought it would be cool to have some sort of binder system. It hasn't worked out. Over the year I've realized that my priorities are:

1. Light and thin
2. FP friendly
3. Quick access to blank page

I had originally bought a Filofax for this year but it doesn't meet criterion #1 and isn't great for #3. Adding and rearranging pages doesn't matter; I don't have the time for such organization. I've tried a lot of things and have come down to one of two strategies:

1. Rhodia pad (light, thin, FP friendly, can easily tear out pages about pts that get discharged) or
2. Make photocopies of my progress notes, fold in half, make notes on these notes in colorful ink

...depending on the nature of the rotation.

There are not enough pearls of wisdom floating around to justify a binder - write them somewhere on a pad and consolidate later as desired.

Similarly I bought a PDA and never used it; it just isn't as convenient as a No. 13 or 16 size Rhodia pad combined with a few lightweight pocket references - Tarascon Pharmacopoeia, Sanford Guide, Maxwell's, and something rotation specific (eg. Pocket Medicine, Current Clinical Strategies Psychiatry, etc.).

A different alternative is the Moleskine Cahier pocket ruled notebook. 3.5 x 5.5 inches and very thin. 32 leaves (64 pages).

Advantages Ruled, not bulky, easy access, no cards to flip through, FP friendly. Come in biege of black.

I give a set of three to my students at the beginning of rounds - and almost universally they love them.

Experiment and do what you are comfortable with. Remember, speed and ease of accrss are important here.

http://www.moleskineus.com/moleskine-cahier-notebooks.html

I have to agree with Dean:
3x5 cards and transfer to PDA later
This will also reinforce the learning process

Add this to the "you know you're a fountain pen geek when..." I read that "Pocket Size Binder" and thought oooh, that's just what I need. Keep Richard in my pocket for those nib emergencies.

A pocket size Binder! Just what is needed for those on-the-road nib adjustments, eh Richard?

Well done, Tom! Utterly hilarious!

having done this already:

1. get a pda. put pharmacopia or epocrates on it. i prefer pharma, but epocrates is free. put an ob wheel (free), merck medicus (free), diagnosaurus (free), the latest shots (free).

2. put some notecards in your scrub pocket.

most important: beat your resident in every morning. do whatever you can to help the team. read every night about patients you saw during the day - this will help things stick. remember, you are paying about $100 a day to be there. make sure you get your money's worth each day. your education is your own responsibility. it is not the residents or the attendings responsibility to "teach" you. if you don't follow your resident like glue, you are going to miss many of the learning opportunities.

did i say to beat your resident in each morning?

buy the book pocket medicine and use it as your own personal notebook-you can even create your own FP friendly refills at the local Staples- HP #28/32 really works well.
HTH

Thanks all for the suggestions so far. Especially nice to hear from others that are a step or two a head of me and what worked/didn't work for them. So it seems to be just grab what ever fits in the pocket, scribble like hell, transcribe it later, and then make sure to always beat the Resident in ( no problems there). Really nice to hear some advice from LordJeebus, OBMike and KkBach.

Jeremy

How about this cool notebook from Belgium
http://www.atoma.be/en/stationary-catalog....+Filing+Systems

Just found the source in the US, I have never tried it:
http://www.myndology.com/disc.php

Samovar

My system for info management was a bunch of 3 x 5 cards with a hole punched in the corner, held together by a small metal ring. Small, cheap, easy to rearrange the cards when needed.

Good luck!

TMann

This looks quite similar to the Levenger Circa stuff? I love the colours on the Atomas though!

I use Alco 3 x 5 cards from K-mart after reading recommendations in this forum. Cheap (54 cents for a pack of 100 cards, if you buy 300-cards pack it's even more economical) and VERY FP friendly.

For PDA, I think Johns Hopkins Abx guide is pretty good for free (I'm not a physician but a hospital pharmacist).

http://hopkins-abxguide.org/

That's far too organised for a medic !!!!

Use the age old technique, handed down over generations from one medic to another. You get the daily print out of patients, scribble in undecipherable shorthand all over it. Refuse to throw it out (cause you know, there might be something important on there), and end up with a white coat overflowing with paper. You can get half a ream of A4 in there if you try hard enough.


On a serious note, I hate nothing more than trying to teach Med students when they do nothing but scribble down everything I say. All the stuff they tell you is available in the books (Handbook of medicine - Yellow - Oxford Press). Use your rotations to learn to interact with patients, practice taking histories (and presenting to anyone that will listen, WITHOUT NOTES !!, like when your really working), and get slick the job. The final exam is an excercise to show that you are ready to become an intern. If you look like you've examined hundreds of patients, and know the ins and outs of patient management (consenting for theatre, what bloods to take, how you actually go about getting a CT including who to talk to) you'll pass with flying colours. All that is learned by watching how the docs work, not watching your pen write stuff down.

This may come over a little condescending, it really isn't meant that way. But you can never emphasize enough just how important it is to look like you know what your doing, and that can only be done by acting like a junior doc when your on your rotations. And that means practicing stuff without the aid of notes...

I am not a doctor, and have never played one on television. However, reading through all this, I remembered something that might be useful to some of you docs, and possibly to other people as well.

A PocketMod is a small paper notebook, made with a clever system of folds (and one cut) of a single sheet of paper. The finished product can look something like this:



You can customize your PocketMod to whatever format suits you best. There is a handy online gizmo that lets you design and print as many of these as you require, or save the design as a pdf that you can print as needed. See http://www.pocketmod.com -- this has been posted here before (see http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...howtopic=21476), but it's a good idea and worth repeating.

This might conceivably be a little easier to keep track of in a lab coat pocket than a bunch of loose index cards. Each page isn't too big, so you won't be tempted to write down everything verbatim on it, and with luck you won't annoy your attending, since the PocketMod fits easily in the palm of your hand.

Absolutely not offended one bit by that. I would much rather hear the advice of what others have to say now as opposed to getting reamed out later. I like the idea of the notebook for those weird things that you need to look up, or as a crib sheet for the first week, and then dump them and get on with being a junior doc. The way that I look at it, I am going to be the one that is always asking "Why" and 'Can I Try"


Jeremy

I don't know if anyone mentioned this precisely, but I use this combination:

I keep the Levenger Pocker Briefcase in my pocket all the time. With the fresh 3x5s.

Then for archiving and organizing, I use the Circa punch to punch through the tops of the cards. The circa punch makes three evenly spaced slots. It's perfect.

Hey, I'm actually a rising PGY-2. Just finished intern-year - phew. Anyway, I made my own patient cards, onto card-stock, that were the size of regular sheets of paper, folded in half. Then, I wrote everything down on them, for each patient, so I could know all labs/meds/results since admission, at the drop of a hat. One card per patient.

There are great patient card templates at medfools.com
You could just use regular paper, but I'm super anal, and put them on color-coded card stock, so I could tell which patient it was, just by the color.
Then, I had a separate card, just plain, but folded in half, and always white, upon which to write notes about what to look up [articles, pathophys, pharm, guidelines, etc] later on, that wasn't necessarily patient-specific-data, but just things I wanted to read about later.

As an intern, I found that making a grid worked out really well, so that all patient names are going down one line, and all the things to do going across the top: labs to check/studies to arrange/discharge paperwork/orders/etc.
But, work as an intern is very different than work as a medical student - as an MS3 & MS4, your job is to know all the details about the handful of patients you're given. As an intern, your job is to get things done on the barrel of patients on your team. So, the details exist, but must be looked up, b/c you can't possibly know them all. As an MS3/4, you can make the job or your intern and resident infinitely easier if you already have access to these details at your fingertips, pronto.

Good luck!