title: What is the best way to check if an Eloquent query returns no answer?
body: <p>I'm using Laravel 4. Say I have an Eloquent model (Patient) and I want to get a patient with the name Bob, I would do this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$patient = Patient::where('name', '=', 'Bob');
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What is the best way to check to see if $patient is a valid record?</p>