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Problem is that if she screws up, someone might die. I would be terrified if someone approached the medical profession the way people do software development.

ploxiln 10y ago
You're right, there are differences - medicine is more rigorous (in a sense), processes are more regulated, there's more "standard procedure" which is more specifically taught and widely followed. But doctors screw up all the time. Sometimes it's dumb mistakes like instruments left in the body after surgery, or the wrong limb operated on. (Like failing to check length when copying a buffer perhaps? Sometimes it's just a bit embarrasing, sometimes catastrophic.) More often, it's just not finding the real cause of the "bug", applying a "fix" or "cleanup" that doesn't fix it.
- newman314 10y ago
  But applying the same logic to other professions does not work in my opinion. For example, if a pilot screws up, people die, lots of people die. Unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of professions where it's not really ok to be "Oops, my bad". And those are the professions that I would say need the most rigor (yet with enough flexibility to catch unknown corner cases) in general. So it's not really debug but more likely post-mortem. =(
matheusmoreira 10y ago
Doctors are human too. Medical error is pretty common. It's not just doctors, either; every healthcare professional is affected. Recognizing this fact led to studies in patient safety. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2673/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2673/ It's a really interesting read, especially the chapter "Basic Concepts in Patient Safety". I find it notable that greater safety is achieved by avoiding reliance on memory. The amount of memorization in medicine is astounding. When I tell my friends there's no shame in looking something up, they look at me like I'm some kind of madman. "What will the patient think? If you can just look something up, why have doctors at all?" Yet this article clearly advocates the use of checklists to make sure nothing is forgotten.

ploxiln 10y ago

You're right, there are differences - medicine is more rigorous (in a sense), processes are more regulated, there's more "standard procedure" which is more specifically taught and widely followed. But doctors screw up all the time. Sometimes it's dumb mistakes like instruments left in the body after surgery, or the wrong limb operated on. (Like failing to check length when copying a buffer perhaps? Sometimes it's just a bit embarrasing, sometimes catastrophic.) More often, it's just not finding the real cause of the "bug", applying a "fix" or "cleanup" that doesn't fix it.

newman314 10y ago
But applying the same logic to other professions does not work in my opinion. For example, if a pilot screws up, people die, lots of people die. Unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of professions where it's not really ok to be "Oops, my bad". And those are the professions that I would say need the most rigor (yet with enough flexibility to catch unknown corner cases) in general. So it's not really debug but more likely post-mortem. =(

matheusmoreira 10y ago

Doctors are human too. Medical error is pretty common. It's not just doctors, either; every healthcare professional is affected. Recognizing this fact led to studies in patient safety. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2673/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2673/ It's a really interesting read, especially the chapter "Basic Concepts in Patient Safety". I find it notable that greater safety is achieved by avoiding reliance on memory. The amount of memorization in medicine is astounding. When I tell my friends there's no shame in looking something up, they look at me like I'm some kind of madman. "What will the patient think? If you can just look something up, why have doctors at all?" Yet this article clearly advocates the use of checklists to make sure nothing is forgotten.