Why Doesn’t My Doctor Know All of This?
Posted on June 23, 2009 by admin
With today’s science and technology, one would presume that professions who saves lives would be utmost fitted with the latest news and technologies but some are finding out that this is just a belief. Can you question your life long family doctor that has been treating your grandparents, parents, and soon to be your kids. Do you have the right to question one’s knowledge in their own field of expertise? Today, many patients are often faced with a question, “Why doesn’t my doctor know all of this?” Overwhelming majority of physicians, endocrinologists, internists, family practitioners, rheumatologists do not updated themselves with the ever changing science and technologies. Why? Because they may just not have the time to constantly update themselves with daily, weekly, or monthly discoveries of medicinal diagnoses and treatment methods.
When asked, most doctors will claim that they routinely read medical journals, but this has been shown not to be the case. The reason is multi-factorial, but it comes down to the fact that the doctors do not have the time. They are too busy running their practices. The overwhelming majority of physicians rely on what they learned in medical school and on pharmaceutical sales representatives to keep them “up-to-date” on new drug information. Obviously, the studies brought to physicians for “educational purposes” are highly filtered to support their product.
There has been significant concern by health care organizations and experts that physicians are failing to learn of new information presented in medical journals and the lack of ability to translate that information into treatments for their patients. The concern is essentially that doctors erroneously rely on what they have previously been taught and don’t change treatment philosophies as new information becomes available. This is especially true for endocrinological conditions, where physicians are very resistant to changing old concepts of diagnosis and treatment despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary because it is not what they were taught in medical school and residency.
