[thepryz]

While I don’t disagree, the problem I often have with medical professionals is that they tend to be arrogant and unable to take in new information to adapt and evolve their frameworks.

I was married to a doctor, helped them study for board exams, etc and was surrounded by other doctors within our social circle. What most people don’t realize, and most doctors themselves refuse to acknowledge, is how limited by specialization their knowledge can be and how the education of most doctors stops after med school and residency. Nutrition, for example, is barely covered at all.

Yes, there are continuing education requirements and countless journals but most doctors do the bare minimum and don’t keep up. I’d even argue that most physician knowledge tends to be updated more often through drug and instrumentation reps promoting their products by taking them out to dinner and entering them into referral programs, etc.

[gardnr]

I wouldn't label that arrogance. In my experience outside the USA, my GP has been unaware of new research / advice / guidelines published by the MoH. They generally respond to new info from reputable sources when you print it out and bring it to them.

I would expect specialists to be subscribed to journals and reading the latest articles in their field. When I saw a specialist at UCSF this was definitely the case; while my GP still has gaps where their current knowledge on a specific subject is from their time at med school.

An equivalence would be a front-end engineer being naive to the happenings on the Linux kernel mailing list. They could likely understand what's going on if they took the time to read it, but that is not their focus.

[Auracle]

The fact that there are advertisements for cancer medications make me think a hell of a lot of specialists don’t keep up. It’s one thing to advertise to consumers about a new medication for their chronic condition and they might not have seen their doctor in 3 years. It’s another entirely to have cancer patients need to ask about the new hotness.

[tstrimple]

Having built software distributed in clinics and troubleshooting with doctors has absolutely confirmed this for me. They are some of the worst clients to deal with. It’s not all that different from many “technologists” though when they casually suggest “easy solutions” outside their domain of expertise. How many ignorant HN posts have started with “why don’t they just”?

[booleandilemma]

they tend to be arrogant

Yeah I can't with the "biology is orders of magnitude more complex than SE/CS or any other field for that matter" and then thinking he can explain to the techies how technology works. Just put the pills in the bag bro. Oh wait, we need to go to a pharmacist for that.

The med students I've known have been some of the most insufferable people I've met.