the cheech

Let me introduce you the concept known as "cheeching." (I guess that's how you'd spell it?) It is essentially the shortened colloquial form of "to work something up by ordering a lot of tests/imaging." So, your patient has galactorrhea. You better cheech up that pituitary.

Cheeching can be a verb as in "to cheech" or a noun "the pituitary cheech."

Perhaps the best use of the term came today in the office when during signout, the intern said something like "so the patient is getting the pituitary cheech and the adrenal cheech, which is essentally the endocrine cheech." This may win the award for most times "cheech" has ever been used in a medical context in the same sentence. But no - I trust that our firm can outdo itself.

Later, a debate on whether all this stuff is really worth cheeching up! Is it really good for a patient to come in for a pulmonary complaint and leave with 3 different, newly cheeched-out diagnoses? Is it good for the healthcare system? Do we have enough resources for all this cheeching? Is it weird that a residency program so formal that the interns change out of their scrubs after night call into formal clothes for morning rounds uses a term like "cheech"? Do any other Osler firms even use this word???

That last question might be the only easy one to answer!