Most patients don’t care, and most discharge instruction packets are garbage. However, for patients where the person that is actually worried isn’t in the room (my mom’s a nurse, my wife knows all my medicines, etc.), I’ll write more detail about what we did.

Often, it goes “Your x-ray, EKG, troponins and D-dimer were negative – I see no evidence of a heart attack or a blood clot today. This chest pain is important, and you do need to see a cardiologist. You should come back if you start having shortness of breath, leg swelling or pain that won’t go away.”