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As someone who's lived with health professionals my whole life ... if you're smart and have a background in science or engineering, you're only about two or thr

As someone who's lived with health professionals my whole life ... if you're smart and have a background in science or engineering, you're only about two or three questions away from stumping health-care providers. The level of understanding required to build a thing is very different from the level of understanding required to patch a somewhat broken system.

GauntletWizard 11y ago
That's a good analogy, but it bears noting that the reason medical professionals only have patch-level knowledge is not for any ignorance or lack of inquisitiveness, but for sheer breadth and lack of source code. There's a reason that where we used to have doctors we now have so many sub specialties; There's just that much to learn and discover, because we don't have the blueprints.
SilasX 11y ago
Yep: - What are the units on blood pressure? 120 of what? - Would it make a difference if I held my arm up while the blood pressure was taken?
- tgb 11y ago
  Seriously? Even I knew the first one and unless I'm quite mistaken the second one can be felt by just raising your arm -- or, better, turning your head upside down.
- vacri 11y ago
  This is missing the forest for the trees a little bit. The actual unit in blood pressure is relatively unimportant; it's so conventional, that no-one produces general medical tools that measure in other units. What is far more important is understanding what the different levels mean in the context of the presenting patient. Is 180 bad? When is it bad? Is it ever good? Is 50 bad? When is it bad? Is it ever good? Is 100 bad &c? If it is bad, what can you do to make it good? Do you do the same thing if it is bad 200 or bad 20? What do you not do when it is bad 200 or bad 20? Which conditions complicate with which medications affect your intended treatment for a bad reading? Meanwhile, over here in the dev world, our passionate mantra is "we shouldn't be judged poorly for 'everyone knows' shit we can just google"...
  - SilasX 11y ago
    Fair points, so let me explain my reasoning there: First of all, in the case from my past, the machine labeled it -- "mmHg". They could have read it off, had they expected things to have units that matter. Second, it's part of the conceptual understanding of what blood pressure means -- that e.g. it's not some normalized percentage, that it indicates how much the fluid inside is pressing against the outside, that it's relative to atmospheric pressure, that we live in and expect a pressurized environment. Third -- I mean, you read it out every day, wouldn't you ever wonder what it means? Imagine a Java dev that doesn't know what System is, only that it's the beginning of the stdout print statements they use. Someone who merely knows that "180 bad, 120 good" has a disconnected understanding, like the expert who can literally do nothing more than plug numbers into an equation but not know what the numbers mean or whether you're measuring them correctly to be compatible with it. It's not enough.

GauntletWizard 11y ago

That's a good analogy, but it bears noting that the reason medical professionals only have patch-level knowledge is not for any ignorance or lack of inquisitiveness, but for sheer breadth and lack of source code. There's a reason that where we used to have doctors we now have so many sub specialties; There's just that much to learn and discover, because we don't have the blueprints.

SilasX 11y ago

Yep: - What are the units on blood pressure? 120 of what? - Would it make a difference if I held my arm up while the blood pressure was taken?

tgb 11y ago
Seriously? Even I knew the first one and unless I'm quite mistaken the second one can be felt by just raising your arm -- or, better, turning your head upside down.
vacri 11y ago
This is missing the forest for the trees a little bit. The actual unit in blood pressure is relatively unimportant; it's so conventional, that no-one produces general medical tools that measure in other units. What is far more important is understanding what the different levels mean in the context of the presenting patient. Is 180 bad? When is it bad? Is it ever good? Is 50 bad? When is it bad? Is it ever good? Is 100 bad &c? If it is bad, what can you do to make it good? Do you do the same thing if it is bad 200 or bad 20? What do you not do when it is bad 200 or bad 20? Which conditions complicate with which medications affect your intended treatment for a bad reading? Meanwhile, over here in the dev world, our passionate mantra is "we shouldn't be judged poorly for 'everyone knows' shit we can just google"...
- SilasX 11y ago
  Fair points, so let me explain my reasoning there: First of all, in the case from my past, the machine labeled it -- "mmHg". They could have read it off, had they expected things to have units that matter. Second, it's part of the conceptual understanding of what blood pressure means -- that e.g. it's not some normalized percentage, that it indicates how much the fluid inside is pressing against the outside, that it's relative to atmospheric pressure, that we live in and expect a pressurized environment. Third -- I mean, you read it out every day, wouldn't you ever wonder what it means? Imagine a Java dev that doesn't know what System is, only that it's the beginning of the stdout print statements they use. Someone who merely knows that "180 bad, 120 good" has a disconnected understanding, like the expert who can literally do nothing more than plug numbers into an equation but not know what the numbers mean or whether you're measuring them correctly to be compatible with it. It's not enough.