3 ms·

What amazes me about medicine is how incredibly much students have to cram into their heads in a short amount of time, and that they are capable of that. I don

by bborud 5y ago

What amazes me about medicine is how incredibly much students have to cram into their heads in a short amount of time, and that they are capable of that. I don't think I could. What is even more amazing is that they still start almost from scratch when faced with the reality of practicing medicine. Because there is still so much to learn and so much to keep up with. Fun episode at the doctor's office: was in for a routine checkup. Joked with doctor about patients that google their symptoms and come up with all manner of wild diagnoses. Remember to ask about a minor symptom I'd been experiencing for about a week. Doctor Googles symptom. Eyes meet. She blushes, I almost fall off my chair laughing.

sterlind 5y ago
it's like the joke about the plumber who just whacks a pipe with a hammer to fix a clog and charges $200. the client protests, saying he should only charge $5 for such a simple fix. the plumber itemizes the bill - $5 for hitting the pipe, $195 for knowing where to hit it. I think doctors have to cram so much in because they need to have all that knowledge available to pick up what to google.
- xtracto 5y ago
  This actually also happens I our (tech) field: Several years ago I was working with 2 other very smart developers. We were the tech team in a small startup, in charge of keeping the systems running. One of the 2 guys and I had quite some experience with "real life" systems in general. The other guy, really smart but his experience was in competitive programming (leetcode like things, super complex algorithms, etc). At some point something broke in production. While looking at the first logs, the algorithms guy gave his diagnostic... but the other guy and I knew it couldn't be such thing due to some very subtle things in the error that was happening. That kind of experience makes the difference of the time it takes to find the root of a problem.
i_hate_pigeons 5y ago
They have lots of reference material for the non usual stuff, I remember looking for something that came wrong on a blood test and landing on the NHS GP manuals and it was full of flow charts for diagnosis and when to refer to an specialist etc

by bborud 5y ago

sterlind 5y ago

it's like the joke about the plumber who just whacks a pipe with a hammer to fix a clog and charges $200. the client protests, saying he should only charge $5 for such a simple fix. the plumber itemizes the bill - $5 for hitting the pipe, $195 for knowing where to hit it. I think doctors have to cram so much in because they need to have all that knowledge available to pick up what to google.

xtracto 5y ago
This actually also happens I our (tech) field: Several years ago I was working with 2 other very smart developers. We were the tech team in a small startup, in charge of keeping the systems running. One of the 2 guys and I had quite some experience with "real life" systems in general. The other guy, really smart but his experience was in competitive programming (leetcode like things, super complex algorithms, etc). At some point something broke in production. While looking at the first logs, the algorithms guy gave his diagnostic... but the other guy and I knew it couldn't be such thing due to some very subtle things in the error that was happening. That kind of experience makes the difference of the time it takes to find the root of a problem.

i_hate_pigeons 5y ago

They have lots of reference material for the non usual stuff, I remember looking for something that came wrong on a blood test and landing on the NHS GP manuals and it was full of flow charts for diagnosis and when to refer to an specialist etc