I start my residency in Internal Medicine in less than one month. I am very excited to finally be a doctor, and I am also pretty nervous. While I realize there will be the residents and attendings above me throughout my intern year, I am afraid that my inexperience as a physician will predispose me to something we learned about today: premature closure. Premature closure occurs when we make a diagnosis too quickly and fail to zoom out to see the entire picture of the patient’s signs and symptoms. We let momentum get in our way of reassessing our conclusions and assumptions, and this can negatively impact our patients. However, I commit myself to the ways that can mitigate early closure: I hope that I will always ask myself whether everything is explained by my initial diagnosis and whether there is anything missing, I hope that these two simple questions will help me be a better physician and help my patients receive better care.
