> Gail, can you explain what a Grand Round is - this is not a term we are
> familiar with here in UK,
> Helen Woodman, Storrington, W. Sussex, UK.

Helen, thank you for bringing that to  my attention.  As near as I can tell
it is a phrase based on the practice of "rounding"  which in hospital and
Doctor circles (no pun intended) is a procedure during which information is
"presented".

Rounds can be "formal" or "informal" depending how closely one is expected
to conform to a written (or unwritten) format for presentation of the
information.  For example:  "Baby Smith is a 4 day old male born at 36
weeks gestation by urgent c-section secondary to maternal preeclampsia.  He
presented to his primary care physician's this morning after failing to
feed....." and so on.

There are "sit down rounds" - when you all sit down and discuss each of the
patients on the service one by one -  and "bedside rounds" when you go from
bed to bed and present the same information at the bedside.
There's "work rounds" where the house staff (residents and interns) go over
the daily patient orders before the Attending physician (our boss) comes
in.

There's "teaching rounds" where we go from patient to patient with the
attending who either lectures us about the particular illness the patient
has or questions us unmercifully to see how much we have read about what
the patient has - this depends on the attending's teaching style.

There are some "fun" take offs on the rounds thing - "GI rounds" is a drug
company sponsored lunch or some other type of free food - "liver rounds" is
some type of get together involving alcohol.

Now back to GRAND ROUNDS.  This is an event that takes place once a week
where a speaker presents a case or a lecture on a particular subject. It is
presented to all the house staff and all the attending staff of the
hospital ( whereas the other rounds are usually less than 10 people).

What is this called in the UK?

Gail
Gail Hertz, MD,IBCLC
Pediatric Resident
author of the little green breastfeeding book - disclaimer: owner of Pocket
Publications