Run-of-the-Mill

The bread and butter of inpatient infectious disease so far has been endocarditis, bacteremia, fever without a source in an ICU patient, and orthopedic consults. Endocarditis and bacteremia, especially due to Staphylococcus aureus, often come hand in hand. The management of these patients is usually fairly straightforward, but I think other services like the blessing of an infectious disease attending. Given my attraction to the critically ill patient, I actually like consults for fever in an ICU patient. These patients usually have multiple potential sources of infection, a complicated hospital course, and many confounding factors. Sometimes, the fever may not even be infectious in etiology, and more often than not, we cover broadly with antibiotics, but still, the investigation is interesting to me. Lastly, orthopedic infections make up a lot of our consults. Unfortunately, most of them could be managed easily by the orthopedic service, but they seem to ask for our advice for anyone with a fever or positive culture.