[phalangion]

I'm a college professor. I try to teach my students enough that they know what to Google, and that they can understand and use the result. I can't teach nearly everything they might need in the future, but I can give them the foundation.

[leetrout]

My reviews from students this semester included this little gem:

“He aggressively encourages the use of search engines”

Because every time they would ask me a question I would ask them if they tried to Google it first.

[fencepost]

Sounds like you need to introduce them to LMGTFY.

[klez]

Of course. Even MDs, despite all their years of study don't have all the procedures and possible diagnoses in their heads all the time and need to read literature and consult with other physicians to reach conclusions.

I'm not sure why people think software development (and computers in general) is somehow different. We don't know everything. We basically can't.

What we (and all other professions) have is knowledge on how to apply new information to what we already know.

So yes, you're right. You have to teach the basics, how to put them together and how to add new pieces once you inevitably hit something you don't know.

[travisoneill1]

Doctors don't seem to know that, though. I have never seen one google anything and I have caught their mistakes by checking myself.

[k__]

I allergic to Amoxicillin and always get irritated looks when I tell this a doctor. They usually have to search for an alternative in books, because they don't know them from the top of their heads.

[imjustsaying]

This is also partly why specialists exist. An infectious disease DO/MD would know both what the alternative would be and possibly even the appropriate dose calculation off the top of their head because antibiotic management is their bread and butter.

If the physician you were at felt unable to make the right call, he could have referred you to or consulted with someone who could. An 'irritated look' might instead be a flurry of such treatment paths going through their mind.

'Can I figure this out on my own? Should I consult? Should I refer out? Should I just check UpToDate? What does the latest literature I read say to do? What was done for the last patient who had this? Has the literature changed since then? What is the hospital policy on this (if any?)? What did my microbiology class say to do for this? What do the boards think is right to do in this instance?'

[sokoloff]

I wonder if the irritated look isn't from "damn, the thing I know from experience works well won't work for this patient" rather than "damn, now I have to crack open a book".

[blub]

Consulting with other specialists or reading specialist literature is in a wholly different class of information quality compared to using a search engine.