Classifications are often rubbish

I used to pride myself on knowing lots of orthopaedic and trauma classifications. Many of them still provide a useful lingua orthopaedica when discussing cases, a few - such as Lauge-Hansen - definitely guide treatment, and a lot of them eg femoral revision classifications, are usually fairly pointless for me in practice, much as I admire their authors

I gave a lecture on revision hips where I introduced a new classification - at least I'd not seen it used in this way before. I actually do use the broad categories, say for the acetabulum, where cavitary bone defect, rim defect and pelvic discontinuity, do have some sort of practical meaning. But I definitely prefer this one, which I presented  at a lecture in Budapest in 2007. A year later I saw someone - who'd been in the audience - repeat it word for word, without due credit. Such is life.

Here are the slides from that PowerPoint (with the odd redaction):

Anyway, I mention it because I saw of of my pet hates suitably challenged recently, on Twitter of all places. The pet hate is the question that it seems all medical students are routinely taught to ask: "on a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is your pain?"

I have never used this stupid question in practice, as it is almost a definition of why we're advised to avoid non-parametric data in research. It means almost nothing in every case that it's used. I've seen it asked, and more than once heard the sullen deadpan reply of '11'. Of course. Probably just after the phrase "I have a high pain threshold you know, doctor, but..."

So I was delighted to see the following, made available by cancer survivor and wit, @TeaLady24. It just needs to be provided in a wipe clean laminate (with the numbers removed), at every outpatient clinic. 

"...just point to the one which represents your feelings best..."

genius, in it's way (click to enlarge)