The Curbside Consult

A curbside consult refers to flagging down a specialist or colleague in the hallways to ask an informal question about a patient. Officially, questions are better answered through the process of formal consultation, but sometimes for quick advice or a minor detail, we'll simply ask the people around us.

Medical students often get "curbsided" by friends and family. We get asked what to do with fingers crushed in doors or sprained ankles or a cold that won't go away. To some extent, our friends and family think of us as ad hoc doctors, a source of medical advice when something isn't quite bad enough to warrant urgent care or the emergency department. We hover in this in-between where we know enough to say something, but not enough to solve things confidently. Indeed, ad hoc medical advice, while convenient, isn't the "proper" way to do things (certainly, nothing on this blog is medical advice and the information here should not be construed or used as such). But as medical students, we strive to be "useful," we're proud of what we know, and we have the resources and time to figure stuff out. It's a tricky situation, certainly, and one I know will continue through residency and my career. I'm still trying to figure out how to balance and finesse these situations.