A Precarious Exchange

Abstract

If an anthropologist were to stumble into this room between 6 and 8 p.m. this evening, he might find the telltale signs of a ritual: a group of residents and interns huddled around a table, scribbling hieroglyphics on scraps of paper.(Figure)To a physician, this scenario is all too familiar — we call it “sign-out” — but in a way, the anthropologist would be right: it is a peculiar ritual, this daily transfer of patients from one medical team to another. As I write this, at the end of a frantic afternoon, 18 residents are simultaneously handing off . . .