AHC: Eddie Van Halen does vascular surgery before music; different Flexner Report in 1910.

Of course, we're going to hire and teach highly dexterous people to do surgery. Why would we ever do it ever differently ! ? !

Well, in OTL, the 1910 Flexner Report formalized and 'professionalized' medical education in various crappy ways. What I'm asking is, how might the practice of medicine both be radically different and be better?
 
The Flexner report was about medical education NOT actual practice of medicine, surgical techniques, and so forth. Abraham Flexner was an educational expert and not an MD. Eddie has great fingers, no doubt, but being a good surgeon takes a lot more than that...
 
If you read the Flexner report, some of the so-called 'medical schools' in operation at the time were downright horrifying.

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Within two years of the Flexner Report roughly half of the "medical schools" in the USA closed. The ones that closed were basically diploma mills, some of the iffy schools upgraded and stayed around, some iffy ones did not. The one described here did not even make the level of potentially fixable.
 
. . . Eddie has great fingers, no doubt, but being a good surgeon takes a lot more than that...
Oh, but I think a different system could work with him, much like a nineteen-year-old can pitch Game 7 of the World Series! And of course there'd be a more experienced surgeon in the OR while Eddie, say, replaces a valve just in case especially and specifically we run into something unexpected.
 
' . . . Laboratory facilities: . . .

' . . . Microscopes appear to indicate a laboratory of pathology or bacteriology; but the "individual lockers" were empty. It was explained that "students have to bring slides, holders, and cover-glasses with them, for they furnish their own and keep them at home." . . . '
Pitiful, pathetic, horrifying, inexcuseable. A rip-off of both the students and the public at large. In fact, it sounds like the institution is borderline between a "school" and a fraudulent criminal enterprise.

So, I think we're in agreement that things were really bad in many places. What I'm asking is, Could the Flexner Report have gone in a different and perhaps better direction?
 
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https://books.google.com/books?id=d...periments with diphtheria antitoxin "&f=false

' . . . In 1894, Émile Roux of the Pasteur Institute read his paper summarizing experiments with diphtheria antitoxin before the International Congress on Hygiene in Budapest.

'Many of the greatest scientists in the world sat in the audience. As Roux finished, these men, each renowned in his own right, began to clap, then stood on their seats, their hand making thunderous sounds, their voices shouting applause in half a dozen languages, their hats thrown to the ceiling. Welch then reported American experiences confirming the work of both the French and Germans. And each delegate returned to his home with a bottle of this marvelous curative agent in his possession. . . '
I'd set this 1894 Conference in Budapest, Hungary, as good as anything, as the beginning of modern medicine. A disease could be detected by clinical observations—in this case diphtheria—a disease which was understood both through chemistry and microscope, and something could be done about it.

I'd also advance the proposition that an experienced doctor could give a newcomer the basics on how to diagnose and treat the disease in just a couple of conversations.
 
Unintended Consequences of the Flexner Report: Women in Pediatrics

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/126/6/1055

' . . . it is also important to draw attention to one of the unintended consequences of Flexner-era reforms, namely, the near elimination of women in the physician workforce between 1910 and 1970. . . . . enshrined an educational model that favored the laboratory over the bedside, the hospital over the home, and the physician-as-researcher over the physician-as-practitioner. . . '
So, the thesis I'm exploring here is that the Flexner-era reforms 'formalized' both medical education and medical practice in some crappy ways — and it could have been done much better.
 
The answer to that is the Flexner report did eliminate the vast bulk of the crap schools/diploma mills. Of course it took a while for the "doctors" out there who were "trained" in them to be flushed out of the system - in 1910 the licensing systems for doctors and credentialing in hospitals etc for privileges were still pretty loose compared to even the 1930s let alone today.
 
Sept. 3, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/health/research/04flu-001.html?_r=2

" . . . In children without chronic health problems, it is a warning sign if they seem to recover from the flu but then relapse with a high fever, Dr. [Thomas] Frieden said. The relapse may be bacterial pneumonia, . . . "
And presumably this is the case for adults, too. Now, in poker terms, this is a playable hand.

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What I'm saying, we might be better off hiring people whose natural inclination is teaching or sales, and them coaching them up so they're good enough on the technical aspects. This might work better than hiring people who are great at Organic Chemistry II and college biology classes and then hoping they're good enough on the communication aspect.

I am not a doctor. Now, if you are a doctor, nurse practitioner, physicians assistant, RN, paramedic, medical journalist, etc, I would challenge you. Give me one other fact about influenza which is as useful and pertinent as the above? I tend to think little ol' me, rank amateur that I am, may have hit upon the top one.
 
Eddie Van Halen was born on January 26, 1955.

Maybe in 1974 at age nineteen, he passes a test, engages in a three-month training program, and yes, begins to do cardiac valve replacements under supervision.

Just like a nineteen-year-old can pitch baseball in the World Series. And before you say, baseball is not life or death, quite true, but it's engaged in seriously and with a high level of skill, and under the close watchful eye of much more seasoned experienced persons who want the younger person to succeed.
 
Medicine has formalized, regimented entrance requirements.

But the actual training is often holding for some grouchy individual where you can't even see well (as I have read). That is, the 'training' is slopsville and more in line with a fraternity hazing.
 
Sigh...that is NOT what medical training is, and someone of any age doing valve replacements with 3 months training (supervised or not) is sooo bogus. From the time I started medical school until when I went out on my own (USA) was 10 years! (4 school/5 residency/1 subspecialty fellowship). Iwas in a fraternity as an undergraduate, my medical training was not frat boy hazing.

I suggest reading the net and watching TV medical shows is not the way to find the truth.
 
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