It often blows me away how staggeringly rude medical professionals can be to one another in emergency situations. You’d think that in the hectic mess surrounding a dying multi-trauma patient on his way from an ambulance cot to a small town hospital bed, the people around him would have better things to do than belittle paramedics. But then I guess the medic ought to have better things to think about than the fact that he’s just been insulted.
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I suspect it has something to do with the fact that most doctors haven’t realized that every (yes, literally every) piece of information they learn in med school is now publicly and easily available on the internet. The point? That medicine insofar as it is knowledge can no longer be considered a possession only of those who have gone through med school… and that to the extent that someone is good with search engines and knows his symptoms, he may well be able to assess his own condition faster, better and more precisely than many doctors.
Experience is the best teacher, of course, so that same person will not have the skill to do anything about it… but I’ve found that for most doctors, pride lies not in their ability to act, but in their knowledge about what is going on.
And that just simply isn’t justified anymore.
I think I’ll have to disagree on this one, Achilles. The internet certainly does offer a wealth of signs and symptoms for about any medical condition you can come up with, but it can’t replace an understanding of human physiology. I’m sure physiology is covered in detail on the internet, but there’s no guide on how to study it in an orderly fashion, and most people don’t have the time to anyway. Having said all that, I do think it’s a very positive development that we’re able to look these things up so easily, better yet if it could someday lessen the need for professional medical opinions of minor illnesses.