Rethinking Medical Education

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Medical education and medicine are topics about which I often find myself thinking. I’m always interested in the questions of “Are we doing it the best way?”, “Is there a better way?”, “How do we adapt the fields to emerging changes?”, and so on. Too often I come to the conclusion that we’re not keeping up with advancements and, as Wayne Gretzky might have put it, we’re skating to where the puck is, and not to where it is going.  Continue reading

The Art of Medicine – Shifting the Paradigm

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes genius and a lot of courage to move in opposite direction.” – Albert Einstein

The problem with many is not that they’re ignorant, it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so and haven’t experienced a new and better way of working.

For many years, I was like a prisoner. Blindfolded. Restrained. Blindly following the prevailing dogma of how a physician should act, what a physician should carry and how a physician should study. In time, I have had a breakthrough. An epiphany. It has become clear to me that one of our the greatest hindrances is that of uninspired knowledge, that of an approach solidly grounded in a pre-data driven era. An approach with a basis in pride.

Pride is a weapon. Pride pushes people in a direction, to act for good or to act for self-interest. Who would not feel good when prompted on rounds by an off-the-wall question to be able to respond correctly? It serves self-esteem. It serves ego. It serves pride. However, we must not forget that pride can also push us in the wrong direction. For every 10 things known, there are likely a dozen or more other things not known and in that fact lies the humility that must remain at all times with even the best physicians. Continue reading

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