That takes Klingon cosplay to a whole new level.![]()
Heterotopic Heart Transplant (this is rare)
And this is why you want to hire and train highly dexterous persons to be surgeons, as long as they're merely good enough in other areas.
That takes Klingon cosplay to a whole new level.![]()
Heterotopic Heart Transplant (this is rare)
And this is why you want to hire and train highly dexterous persons to be surgeons, as long as they're merely good enough in other areas.
I work in the medical field and deal with surgeons. Trust me, it's a learned skill and some of the docs aren't as good as you might think.I am actually rather stunned by this. While I absolutely accept that professional athletes have a God given gift well beyond the average person that does not translate, in any way, into the sort of knowledge it requires to be a surgeon. Yes some 18 year olds have exceptional motor skills, but can you even get a 12 year old to understand half the information a physician needs to acquire, even if you see surgeons as more highly paid meat-cutters (which BTW is entirely untrue) I would point out that the number of 18 year old highly trained butchers is fairly close to zero.
Perhaps the best way to ask this question is this: would you rather have an 18 year old with maybe two years of training, and the maturity if the average 18 year old or a 28 (or 38) yer old who has gone through the pressure cooker of STEM undergrad, Medical School, and Residency with all the knowledge acquired during all that schooling perform life or death surgery on the individual you love most on this earth?
Fairly sure I know how 99% of the population is going to answer.
... (it's an overhyped technical job, despite what many people will tell you). ...
@Inferus: When I was in medical school (admittedly 40+ years ago), our chief of surgery remarked "you can teach a monkey to take out an appendix, but when the "appendix" turns out to be a perforated cecal carcinoma, then what?" Or (in my case) how about microsurgical reconstruction of the brachial plexus in a 3 month old child, diagnosing and developing a reconstructive plan for someone with arthritis mutilans of the hands, or deciding in the combat zone, whether to try and salvage a limb or amputate it (hint its not just the wound but who else needs care, what's in the blood bank, and much more..). For many specialties (not just surgical ones) some of the minutiae you learn in medical school turns out not to be used much if at all, however knowing that makes you a better doctor.
I see where this is going...but how the shit would this actually work? Do we send high school kids to “surgery school” in the afternoons if they qualify? Do we have 14-year-olds doing practice surgery on pig carcasses or whatever the hell they do in med school these days?
Crap! As someone who's been following baseball closely for almost 70 years, I should have caught this one many posts ago. That 18yo pitching in the bigs or high minors is the product of a long and hard scrabble winnowing process, and many more people have played some baseball than Operation by Hasbro. Good catch, 1 L only...I think this something that is being overlooked. A 20-year-old professional baseball player is likely to have 15 years of experience playing baseball, much of it at a highly competitive level. The attrition rate through that time is astronomical. This really does not seem like a good model for medical education.
I work in cardiac so I deal with transplants (heart, valve), AAA (Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms), congenital defects (septal closures, coarctations), etc while also dealing with peripheral issues involving kidneys, pulmonary hypertension, etc. I AM quite hands on from putting in ECMO, balloon pumps, etc while also serving in a full fledged trauma hospital. I likewise handled the full on build of our inventory database, imaging servers, and serve as the liaison for digital monitoring of equipment/case recording. Forgive me if I am challenging your opinion on what actually occurs in a surgical suite. You might be surprised to hear how inept docs are (most times they don't know your name before they step into the room and they definitely don't know your name or issue when they scrub in as I have had to relay exactly why we are doing the procedure to a doc who shows up late and complains about doing paperwork while making private phone calls as we're trying to keep to a grueling schedule), how quite a few have to be corrected (I've had to, while in scrub, relay solutions and prevent mistakes as the doc becomes agitated when the case doesn't turn out as routine as expected), and I have had to read ECHO and gain access because some docs aren't competent enough to keep basic skills or acquire skills in new equipment. I once had to pull a doc off a patient when we shocked him out of V-Fib because the doc couldn't fathom that he would be affected by an electrical charge.May I ask what exactly you do in the medical field? If you think surgery of any sort is just some technical job I'd be surprised if you actually directly work with surgeons in the operating room. It'd be like me calling my circulating nurse an "overhyped secretarial job" which is most assuredly not true.
Robots in the OR are currently and will be for the foreseeable future extensions of the surgeon rather than direct replacements.
From someone only a fair bit closer to medical school I can say this is still the case.
Worked in numerous facilities (all over the US and some abroad; been quite prodigal). Stop believing the bs of ER, Grey's, and House. Doctors are a fraternity that protect their own, will shuffle you off to other departments rather than deal with you, and at times even indulge in unprofessional activities (infidelity, deals with reps, unnecessary procedures). It is support staff (nurses, techs, PAs, midlevels) who do the work while predominantly for profit hospitals (and even non-profits) find ways to profit themselves.@ inferus: Doctors, like all other ares, have unethical, lazy, or downright criminal members of the profession. Having said that, I shudder to think of the place you work. Just saying.
It IS like any other job (some are lazier than others; docs who DON'T put markers for grafts, mis-report procedural actions, even make moronic decisions such as using a RIMA rather than an SVG just in case).If it is like any other field, by the time the robots get good enough to replace doctors the humans will just be there to tick boxes and sell the product (in this case surgery).
Eg consider accounting. An AI can have a firmer understanding of taxes and laws than a human. It can autimatically check all your bank accounts etc as it will have access to everything the govt has on you. And it will be more ethical than a human, if only because the government's tax AIs will be double checking everything and the AI's progarmer's will be sued if it does anything illegal. All the accountant will provide is a smiling face to the customer. This is the future of every professional job.
The average doc doesn't know how to use a computer; you expect them to understand robots? The future is automation (robots doing the job). It is easier than you think and cheaper when you don't have to worry about someone claiming their experience warrants a mid level six figure income. A lot of responsibility has already shifted to computers and less invasive procedures (pumps, infrared, laser, percutaneous procedures, etc). The future is actually easier and simpler with stem cells, gene therapy, earlier intervention through Smart technology, etc. Docs will be needed less. That is the future. Not trusting MORE in the hands of a few.Just a laymans guess but with the way that modern medicine seems to be going:
Imho we need more qualification and not less. At some point in the not so far away future a good surgeon probably needs a fair ammount of knowledge in the field of robotics.
Worked in numerous facilities (all over the US and some abroad; been quite prodigal). Stop believing the bs of ER, Grey's, and House. Doctors are a fraternity that protect their own, will shuffle you off to other departments rather than deal with you, and at times even indulge in unprofessional activities (infidelity, deals with reps, unnecessary procedures). It is support staff (nurses, techs, PAs, midlevels) who do the work while predominantly for profit hospitals (and even non-profits) find ways to profit themselves.
The crazy thing about docs is they are like any other job: what is the fastest way to get through a problem? I have worked 72 hours straight only to watch a doc whine about 4 hours. I have been disrespected on a fairly regular basis while watching docs give false information to fawning patients. And don't get me started on doctors' wives.
Some info you guys should know: Emergency docs can't read ECGs, do not do surgery like ER pretends they do, and are quick to give false diagnoses to get you out of their department as they are more inept and lazy than general practitioners (imagine my fun when my three year old went into anaphylactic shock and I knew more than the moron assigned to me or when I get called in at 2 AM for cardiac arrest when it is actually flu). Not every doc is competent. My professional ratio is 50% in every hospital. In the move to digital, most docs still struggle as they are borderline computer illiterate (I have spent a year in this facility repeating myself over and over again). The majority of clinical work (75-80%) is done by support staff. Thank you for your platitudes to the doc who does not read your records, does not look at your PETs, MRIs, or labs, and who usually shows up at 9 when they should be in hospital at 7 (and then threaten my job with admin blaming me for why it takes so long to start cases). You might want to investigate how most hospital admins have changed protocol to force docs to ACTUALLY talk to you about your condition (they prefer to send midlevels like me to speak with you as they have better things to do).
I don't mean to be rude but if you believe the ridiculous views media sells you on medicine or actually think your doc is God (who do you usually deal with more in clinic?) then I worry. I have worked with docs I absolutely respect and I would trust my family with. I have also dealt with cretins of an incredibly self-centered, narcissistic bent I have had to be pulled off of. Use common sense when it comes to medicine.
A doc is just as fallible as you. Dispel the aura.
That's crazy.Emergency docs can't read ECGs, do not do surgery like ER pretends they do, and are quick to give false diagnoses to get you out of their department as they are more inept and lazy than general practitioners (imagine my fun when my three year old went into anaphylactic shock and I knew more than the moron assigned to me or when I get called in at 2 AM for cardiac arrest when it is actually flu).
Speaking as a currently retired specialty surgeon, this idea is completely nonsense. Depending on your educational model, the post secondary education for a medical degree is 6-8 years (European and North American models). Following getting your medical degree, the post degree training is 5-8 YEARS before you are considered competent to be on your own. The decision as to whether or not to perform surgery is done by the surgeon NOT by a non-surgeon - a non surgeon MD may refer a patient who may (or may not) be a candidate for surgery but the decision to operate or not and which surgery to perform is done by the surgeon. During my career I had a good number of patients referred for potential surgery where that was NOT the appropriate treatment as well as a fair number of patients who should have been referred and gotten their surgery much sooner than they did for the best outcomes. Diagnostic skills related to your surgical specialty are as important as surgical skills, and take place before you pick up the scalpel.
Experience counts. At the end of my postgraduate training (6 years) I was much better with diagnosis and technique than at the beginning. It is not uncommon that one can encounter an unexpected anatomic variation (there are lots of them) or something else unsuspected once you are in an operation and you then need to shift gears, often urgently. If you have a complex problem, if things go poorly, etc there is no time to go to the library and check things out - you need to act right away and if you don't bad, very bad, things happen.
The "teenage doctors" on a few TV shows are interesting fantasy but just that. Even if someone could cram their education through medical school in by the age of 18 (basically ASB - just too much stuff), and they had natural physical skills like some ballplayers, they now have to embark on the actually training to become a surgeon. You start small, assisting (often second assisting) at operations, caring for pre and postop patients, and in the clinic and gradually assume more and more responsibility for operations with a senior surgeon there with you. Ask yourself if you want an 18 year old who has just completed his private pilot training to take the controls, without a co-pilot, of a large passenger jet on which you and your family are passengers. Sure he has great reflexes and eagle eye vision but...
When everything is going well, its nice but in the middle of the night when everything with the patient is turning to crap, that is when you need all your skill, experience, and maturity - been there, done that more often than you can realize.
CalBear, I’m glad your dad found a good surgeon (perhaps with your help?) and am even more glad that it worked out so well for him!There is another school of thought on this.
When you are having an angioplasty you want someone who is in at least the four figures of procedures done, ideally 5 digits (assuming you live in a major metro this isn't really difficult, some cardiologists seem to specialize in them, as I understand it it is one of those things that you get better the more you do). Dy dad's surgeon was somewhere north of 10K; when he needed a second one done it was by the REAL expert in the area who was north of 20K. All the bright young docs thought he needed open heart surgery, the Pro from Dover, who was on the teaching staff at Stanford (although he was also the Big Gun for Kaiser Northern California, God bless him and his to the 10th generation), told them to have a seat right in the corner, watch, and learn. That was 15 years ago, near as I can tell that doctor's work will outlast my Dad. Experience counts.
Adrian Kantrowitz was involved in the race for the first successful heart transplant in the late 60s. But he perhaps did his most good later on with:![]()
The person with high spatial reasoning . . .