[fjjrxcbdhx]

Coming from a family of medical doctors, medicine stands to gain a lot in terms of quality of service by increasingly automating doctors out of the loop. These people (my family members and relatives included) typically go into the profession for money and social status instead of helping patients, to the point where it borders on being exploitative.

[ZanyProgrammer]

Or doctors could learn to be more humane when dealing with patients? Calling for automation in this case seems to be a very software engineering centric solution to the issue.

[fjjrxcbdhx]

I don't even work in software, but it just makes sense considering most of what they do is looking up factoids in a textbook. They frequently misdiagnose or let things slip by because there's just no way for humans to memorize that many books.

[nugget]

That's a little like saying software developers spend all day googling for syntax. The "factoids" aren't very useful unless you know how to put them together and what to do with them.

[fjjrxcbdhx]

It's a very different kind of knowledge retrieval, i.e. knowledge about something as opposed how to do something. Your example doesn't really fit.

[et2o]

You have no idea what you are talking about.

[fjjrxcbdhx]

Well that sure is substantive.

[__jal]

Wow.

Who knew that medicine and library science were the same thing? Come to think of it, I bet librarians could replace lawyers, too. Just need to teach them to shout "objection" and be jerks in the coffee room, right?

[fjjrxcbdhx]

You be smug as much as you like, but there's a reason why they say medical school is mostly memorization.

[jessaustin]

I also have health care professionals in my family, and I've heard the phrase "shit through a pipe" used to refer to patients on multiple occasions. Doctors want to help, but primarily because helping is part of their job. If some aspect of a patient's situation makes the job harder, doctors respond just like anyone else does. They don't inherently care more about their customers than e.g. the wait staff at a restaurant.

ISTM that many of the complaints of fat people echo those of elderly people. The medical community has somewhat responded to those by creating the specialization of geriatric medicine. End-of-life care, especially for elderly patients in pain, still sucks, but they're trying to do better. When fat people have better politics, perhaps they'll be able to pressure the doctors into providing less egregiously poor care for them as well.

[et2o]

Comments like this are incredibly uninformed and in my experience not really true. If you can get into medical school, you could do another job that is a lot less of a slog and make more money. There are slides going around somewhere where if you account for hours worked, doctors make about the same as UPS drives on average.

[thanksgiving]

There's a saying that we can't block the sun with the palm of our hands. What gp says is definitely a fact. A lot of people just want a decent life for themselves. I would like to deny this because I know when I throw a brick in the mud, it can come back to my shirt as well. However, we shouldn't run away from the truth because it is unpleasant. A lot of people go to school to become doctors, lawyers, (and lately software programming) because they think this is a good way to make a good salary. If it is not about absolute value of salary, it is about opportunity cost. "What would I do if I don't go to medical school?" Military recruiters know that there is something similar going on in potential enlistees as well.

Lets not pretend that it is not going on. Lets face the facts. Many people (if not most) are not motivated primarily by their need to make the world a better place for everyone else. We are too primitive for that. I'd argue we aren't even programmed for that yet. In a world where people think it is acceptable for people to starve if they can't or won't work, it is too much to think that our doctors, lawyers, and corporate executives are a different breed or species.

Sorry I have tremendous respect for our doctors as I have for our soldiers but that doesn't mean everyone who goes in to medical school or military training went in with perfectly altruistic purposes.

[fjjrxcbdhx]

The reality about breakeven with loans doesn't change their expectation of money and social status. Also the current generation of doctors received their education when costs were much lower and becoming doctor had better financial incentives.