| > I've never seen a doctor research anything either That's a little surprising to me. One of the coolest things about practicing medicine today is that I can pull out my phone in front of a patient and find guidelines that I'm not familiar with, medication side-effects, and other point-of-care resources that really do enhance my clinical ability in real-time. Granted, I work in a hospital setting. Maybe it's different in the clinics. BTW, though I feel I'm underpaid for what I do (which many outsiders would find ridiculous), I'm overall pretty happy with being a physician. > I'd take a crowd sourced db of health info over a doctor's personal knowledge any day of the week. So would I. But what you'd learn in the first week of hanging out with a doctor in a typical clinical setting is that most patients are frankly too uneducated to be able to use that kind of tool. When I did residency, I suspect most of the patients I saw didn't have internet. Many were illiterate and a disturbing number simply didn't care about their own well-being. I'd love to build up a practice with patients like you, but people like you tend to be pretty healthy. |
> I'd love to build up a practice with patients like you, but people like you tend to be pretty healthy.
There's also the factor that teaching hospitals tend to get a lot of poor and uneducated patients. Private clinics have a different clientèle, and there are definitely plenty of individuals out there who are not in perfect medical condition, yet are educated/informed enough for doctors to interact with on a higher level than they currently do.