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I don't really care if my thoracic surgeon has a strong grasp of microeconomics or 19th Century British Lit. I only care that s/he has good medical training and

I don't really care if my thoracic surgeon has a strong grasp of microeconomics or 19th Century British Lit. I only care that s/he has good medical training and experience. Note: I'm a doctor.

eropple 9y ago
You don't care if your surgeon has been exposed to the idea of opportunity costs and given a framework for thinking about them structurally? That's pretty weird, Doc.
- tptacek 9y ago
  I sure don't. First-line health care is way too expensive, and everyone suffers from it, both patients and prospective caregivers. I don't really believe exposure to gen-ed requirements makes my internal medicine doctor any more effective at diagnosing and treating illness.
  - eropple 9y ago
    First-line health care is too expensive for reasons entirely separate from "the doctor had the basics of a humanities education," though. TBH, most of the doctors I know (and I used to work in healthcare) are hyper-specialized cargo-cultists in a lot of ways and that worries me a lot; a basic framework of how-to-think-about-things seems kind of important to me (and that's what the humanities are).
    - tptacek 9y ago
      I think I'm going to push back on this. First-line health care is expensive in large part because the educational process of taking an 18 year old and turning them into a caregiver who can prescribe drugs and perform basic procedures is nosebleed expensive. (I'm staring down the barrel of it right now with my first kid going off to school this fall). I'm aware that a lot of that expense is in stuff like organic chemistry, which we probably don't want to cut back on. But the gen-ed stuff matters too, especially because it matters where you go for undergrad and how well you do in those gen-ed classes in order to get into a selective med school, which is how you get a selective residency. I don't think those gen-ed requirements are really paying for themselves in how health care is delivered.
      - eropple 9y ago
        Is it nosebleed expensive because of this class or that class, or because demand is high and supply of positions in medical schools is strictly controlled to provide scarcity to the consumer market on the other end? I kinda feel like you're pulling an XY problem here. (Grats on your oldest, though. Condolences on the bill.)
  - sanderjd 9y ago
    I think this is one of those things that reasonable people can disagree about. Cost is definitely a problem, but I believe another problem is doctors being a sort of "human body engineer" rather than a personal care provider. I personally believe that going straight to technical school would exacerbate that issue.
    - eropple 9y ago
      I agree with you, but one quibble--I would suggest "human body technician" more than "engineer". I've met doctors who understood the practice of medicine; I've met more who treat it as an if-then by rote (and who believe some real cockamamie stuff on top of that). You see this in tech too, of course. Knowing the "what to do" and knowing the "why you do it" are different things. I don't think enabling the latter is helped by rushing straight into technical education, either.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
sanderjd 9y ago
You don't care but I do. This is how we set it up as a society. I think that's a good thing. You don't. Perhaps over time, if more people agree with you than me, things will change. I would be bummed by that, but so it goes. But it's not where we are today. Edit: removed a second paragraph that I thought was dumb in retrospect.

I don't really care if my thoracic surgeon has a strong grasp of microeconomics or 19th Century British Lit. I only care that s/he has good medical training and experience. Note: I'm a doctor.

eropple 9y ago

You don't care if your surgeon has been exposed to the idea of opportunity costs and given a framework for thinking about them structurally? That's pretty weird, Doc.

tptacek 9y ago
I sure don't. First-line health care is way too expensive, and everyone suffers from it, both patients and prospective caregivers. I don't really believe exposure to gen-ed requirements makes my internal medicine doctor any more effective at diagnosing and treating illness.
- eropple 9y ago
  First-line health care is too expensive for reasons entirely separate from "the doctor had the basics of a humanities education," though. TBH, most of the doctors I know (and I used to work in healthcare) are hyper-specialized cargo-cultists in a lot of ways and that worries me a lot; a basic framework of how-to-think-about-things seems kind of important to me (and that's what the humanities are).
  - tptacek 9y ago
    I think I'm going to push back on this. First-line health care is expensive in large part because the educational process of taking an 18 year old and turning them into a caregiver who can prescribe drugs and perform basic procedures is nosebleed expensive. (I'm staring down the barrel of it right now with my first kid going off to school this fall). I'm aware that a lot of that expense is in stuff like organic chemistry, which we probably don't want to cut back on. But the gen-ed stuff matters too, especially because it matters where you go for undergrad and how well you do in those gen-ed classes in order to get into a selective med school, which is how you get a selective residency. I don't think those gen-ed requirements are really paying for themselves in how health care is delivered.
    - eropple 9y ago
      Is it nosebleed expensive because of this class or that class, or because demand is high and supply of positions in medical schools is strictly controlled to provide scarcity to the consumer market on the other end? I kinda feel like you're pulling an XY problem here. (Grats on your oldest, though. Condolences on the bill.)
- sanderjd 9y ago
  I think this is one of those things that reasonable people can disagree about. Cost is definitely a problem, but I believe another problem is doctors being a sort of "human body engineer" rather than a personal care provider. I personally believe that going straight to technical school would exacerbate that issue.
  - eropple 9y ago
    I agree with you, but one quibble--I would suggest "human body technician" more than "engineer". I've met doctors who understood the practice of medicine; I've met more who treat it as an if-then by rote (and who believe some real cockamamie stuff on top of that). You see this in tech too, of course. Knowing the "what to do" and knowing the "why you do it" are different things. I don't think enabling the latter is helped by rushing straight into technical education, either.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

sanderjd 9y ago

You don't care but I do. This is how we set it up as a society. I think that's a good thing. You don't. Perhaps over time, if more people agree with you than me, things will change. I would be bummed by that, but so it goes. But it's not where we are today. Edit: removed a second paragraph that I thought was dumb in retrospect.