Bag of bones

doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7391.719/a

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Liam Farrell, general practitioner

Crossmaglen, County Armagh

Whenever a new patient joins the practice I look through the chart from back to front. When read in chronological order a chart becomes a kind of storybook, so it's less like real work (although if a chart consists of more than five volumes, I speed read).

The charts tell us as much about the changing nature of medical practice as they do about the patients. The old GP notes are terse but colourful one liners—“swinging the Pb”—and …