What Bedside Skills Could the Modern Rheumatologist Possess? Part II. "Certain Technical Procedures"

Rheumatologists have never been reluctant to adopt procedures that might enhance their diagnostic or therapeutic powers. Their propensity to penetrate the joints of the patients they were treating set them apart from the general internist. Since the 1980s, when a chance to look inside the joints they were treating attracted a few rheumatologists, other things that could be done at the bedside emerged with now an array of bedside procedures that could be part of a rheumatologist's skill set. Besides gains in diagnosis and/or therapy, each constitutes a chance to restore the physical contact between physician and patient, riven by factors of the last decade, such as electronic medical records and COVID. With such contact so important to satisfaction of the patient and physician alike, acquisition of proficiency in certain technical procedures described herein offers one path to begin restoring rheumatology to the richly fulfilling practice it once was.