Title basically. I’m about midlife crisis age (lol) and I’ve been on computers and technology since I could walk. What is with all these doctors who are barely older than me who can barely use the Internet, don’t know how to type or what an adblocker is? I don’t feel like I can trust a doctor who is ok with malware coming in because they doesn’t run a free adblock or even DNS block. I mean wth?
They spent 8 years focusing completely on their field of expertise and have been in high demand once they start working.
There’s nothing about a medical school curriculum that really teaches about technology. Why would you assume that they would know more than the average person about a thing that’s outside of their field?
It’s focus. A person can only know so many things and it takes a lot of basic science knowledge (Biology, chemistry, etc.) building upon itself over and over to learn medicine. Technology isn’t really a part of learning medicine so the entirety of be becoming a doctor kind of leaves out a lot of digital skills.
It’s the same reason most computer science majors can’t (sucessfully) do surgery.
They are?
Do you have stats for this? Because all my doctors (who range from 30 to 60) are very savvy. They use apps on their phones for auto-dictation, do video calls with me, are pulling up reference material and links while we talk, etc.
During my last visit my doc pulled out a $2000 dermatology camera attached to a tablet to take color-accurate photos of skin. It was wifi connected and sent the images directly to my records.
I think we need a trustworthy study to understand this.
I worked IT for a decent sized hospital network in a decent sized city for about 5 years, and yeah pretty much universally doctors were terrible with technology. Maybe that’s changed somewhat in the 10 years since I was fired by that shithole, but I’m pretty confident in agreeing with OP’s assessment.
That said, I wouldn’t expect the general public to know about ad blockers or DNS, and doctors would be no exception to that.
I couldn’t say for sure, but I’ve seen something similar happen in the few people I know becoming medical doctors or in other doctoral programs. These programs are very intense and incredibly stressful. A truly amazing amount of knowledge is required to complete these programs. I think it’s a lot harder to keep abreast of almost any topic that isn’t related to your doctorate while in these programs and the pressure to commit the knowledge to memory can easily be overwhelming, which makes some sense, considering the circumstances.
I don’t feel being unaware of adware blockers disqualifies someone from doing good medical work, the two simply aren’t related. Heck. I’m in sales. Doctors often make terrible sales agents. Should I fault them because they don’t understand something that’s so simple for me? No, it’s a different field I’m glad they know about their expertise well and I don’t really need them to understand how to set up a PiHole.
What does concern me is the idea of doctoral students using AI to ease their study burden. I think that could have dire consequences.
This raises a lot of good points. My brother went through the medical program and probably did more study in his undergraduate/post grad than id be capable of in a lifetime. The workload they do just to get their degree is insane.
Its truly maddening. I live with someone doing a non-medical doctorate and I’m good friends with an M.D. student. The amount of time and focus required is astounding. I’m grateful that people take the effort and have the dedication, but, fuck, I need more free time in my life than what can be afforded to these people. Especially during the residency. They treat you so poorly in these programs, it would be called abuse in any other field.
They treat you so poorly in these programs, it would be called abuse in any other field.
Maddening is right on. The fact the so much of the old guard has the “we suffered through it so now you should too” mindset as well. More than once during my brothers residency a senior doctor has attempted to throw him under the bus as well. Credit to them because it’s a solid “no thanks” from me.
And a hell of a lot less sex with your colleagues and superiors than Grey’s Anatomy would have you believe!! Though watching that show after seeing people go through doctoral programs makes me feel it’s one massive ethics violation and every doctor in that hospital would be fired if they ever audited the place.
It’s a common fallacy to believe people that are doctors (or have a PhD) are really smart. They know one specific thing really well, anything outside of that one thing they are as smart as any random person.
Specifically for medical, there’s a few other reasons. Medical software is often garbage, a doctor’s day to day experience with computers is not great. This doesn’t make doctors want to learn more about computers. Doctors get trained by older doctors, so it’s going to take longer for those that aren’t hostile to computers to get into teaching and how to use computers in a beneficial way. This is just barely starting to happen, I doubt many teaching staffs are completely pro computer, but at least some are.
Medical software can also be deliberately garbage, and proprietary, to milk it for all its worth in support fees.
