avant-garde said:
My question then, is why do you need a doctor (10+ years of schooling) to do that?
With the aid of technology, you could have a nurse fill in that role instead...when people realize that the practical importance of the doctor himself has diminished significantly, then maybe they wouldn't feel the need of personal interaction with the doctor so much?
As I see it, technology might be able to make doctors obsolete... but won't diminish the importance of nurses.
In addition to Nan's response, people are NOT all identical, perfectly built machines. Every one is slightly different, or even greatly different. I really don't think technology will make doctors obsolete by a long shot, not even in the operating room, as has been suggested above. How could you program a computer to handle the huge variety of variables that contribute to the differences in anatomy and physiology, newly emerging diseases, etc., when humans cannot even predict them? As I explain to my med students, we aren't training them so they can diagnose the cases that perfectly fit the textbook description. We're training them to diagnose the vast majority of cases that do not fit the textbook descriptions perfectly, or not at all, or that are new and have never been described before.
I have my doubts that a computer could even perform the most routine surgeries. Yes, for some of them, nurses can, so can residents. When I was in Mozambique, where there is a severe shortage of physicians, indeed, that is what they are doing, training nurses and surgical "technicians" to perform the very routine surgeries and procedures...appendectomies, caesarian sections, set broken bones, etc. However, that involves giving more training to those professionals than they have traditionally been given. But, when there is a complication, they are still not trained to handle it. It gives the patient a much better chance than if nobody was there to do anything at all, but isn't a very good substitute for having a physician nearby who could also save the patient in the case of a complication. Why don't I think a computer can do that? Because even for something like an appendectomy, the appendix isn't in exactly the same place in every person, sometimes it is surrounded by more or less fat, sometimes adhered to the surrounding intestines, longer, shorter, thicker, thinner, sometimes an artery or vein isn't in the usual place (as if there is such a thing as "usual"), perhaps entirely on the opposite side of the body from usual, sometimes encased within scar tissue from a previous surgery, etc.
Now, what about when nothing is where it is supposed to be? Someone comes in with a major trauma, and needs to be put back together again. Maybe a section of intestine needs to be removed and put together, with blood supply redirected to a place that blood supply never normally goes. There's no formula for that. Sometimes, you just have to look at what's still left intact and splice in pieces from other parts of the body to ensure all of the remaining intestines will live. Physicians are the only ones given the level of training to know where every artery in your intestine goes to make sure they pick one that makes sense. We don't teach this to nurses, they don't need it for what they need to do.
And, if we did start training nurses to do this, then what about the jobs nurses currently do? Who will do them? And if you need to give nurses the training to be doctors, why not just call them doctors?
There is a reason there are so many specialties in the health professions, it's because there are a lot of things people need to ensure they have good health.
. Any help is greatly appreciated.
