
Doctors are turning to YouTube to fill in gaps in their training - prostoalex
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/24/doctors-are-watching-surgical-procedures-on-youtube.html
======
viraptor
It's not just medical residents. Doctors do refresh their knowledge from
videos online. And they totally google for information. But I don't think it's
what many people imagine when reading it.

> How can doctors tell which videos are valid and which contain bogus
> information?

They're doctors. They had years of training and know the basics of what
they're booking up. It's closer to experienced developers looking up specific
usage for some tool which they're familiar with otherwise, rather than
learning from scratch.

Sure, there's going to be some extreme bad cases, but those are bad doctors in
general, the source of info is not relevant.

~~~
bbrodriguez
I recently had an elevated D-Dimer level in my blood lab which indicates a
clot of some sort. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office while my primary
care doctor was reading the lab results. He literally started Googling
“primary causes of D-Dimer elevation” and clicked on the link to a WebMD
documentation on D-Dimer levels. That’s when I realized that’s their
StackOverflow. Combined with their existing training, I assume WebMD helps
them make better judgement calls (definitely compared to a lay person self-
diagnosing themselves). He then said, “well, none of the top causes really
apply to your situation: you didn’t have a surgery recently and it’s
impossible for you to get pregnant as a guy”.

I was consequently referred to a hematologist.

~~~
vo2maxer
Some resources Doctors use: Medscape [1] which is owned by WebMD; Sources like
MPR [2] for handy drug information and The Medical Letter [3] for in-depth
medication reviews; UpToDate [4]; various journals depending on specialty, The
New England Journal of Medicine being one of the most prestigious [5]; the
Sanford Guide for infectious diseases [6].

[1] [https://www.medscape.com/](https://www.medscape.com/)

[2] [https://www.empr.com/](https://www.empr.com/)

[3] [https://secure.medicalletter.org/](https://secure.medicalletter.org/)

[4] [https://www.uptodate.com/home](https://www.uptodate.com/home)

[5] [https://www.nejm.org/](https://www.nejm.org/)

[6] [https://www.sanfordguide.com/](https://www.sanfordguide.com/)

------
bredren
I'd be worried about a doctor that didn't use all online resources available
to learn about the areas they practice in.

Around 2010, I started noticing medical professionals had less information
about what I had come in with than what I could find in my own research.

Not every time, but part of the time I've felt like I did not get valuable
information gleaned from obvious experience.

Other times, I've found treatments I can handle on my own, saving copays and
deductibles. For example, the procedure for draining blood from a fingernail
after slamming it in a car door.

More recently, I had ankle sprain that seemed to recur, and a medical visit
for $65 came back with "go to PT."

Which was going to be $125 per session. So I watched youtube videos and got
therabands and have been doing the exercises for "free." And it is working.

There is unquestionable space for medical professionals, their treatments and
the gates they create between people and prescribed medicines.

However, just as YC has turned expensive legal processes into simplified
documents "anyone" can use online, some medical diagnosis / treatments have
been similarly decomodified.

~~~
spookthesunset
Don't even know where to start with this--with all due respect this reads as
textbook dunning kruger You aren't a trained medial expert. You lack the years
of training and experiance somebody in the field has. Just like any other
profession, that training is there to help you filter out how to properly
think about the problem-space you are in and filter out all the noise. There
is no-doubt a lot of unstated things that those youtube videos _dont_ talk
about that an untrained random person like yourself simply doesn't know.

You lack the internal knowledge-base that somebody with training has and
therefore you are much more likely to mis-diagnose yourself, fall into an edge
case that somebody with training could have easily caught, or miss something
very important because it wasn't stated in the video you watched.

I dunno man... when it comes to the medial field I personally let the experts
do their work. Relying on the internet, which is especially full of
superstition, noise and pure bullshit when it comes to medial information,
seems like setting yourself up to get hurt. But maybe that is just me...

~~~
netwanderer3
I agree with your point of view that only trained medical experts are
qualified to treat a real medical health issue. However, the mentality of
completely entrusting your own life and health to someone whom you don't know
whether they have good enough work ethics and compassion or not is frankly
quite a big risk.

In reality, other than medical scientific knowledge and methods, effective
treatments also come from having compassion and caring deeply for your
patients. Unfortunately, we have to admit that not all doctors today have
that. I have seen the good and the bad ones, good doctors were really good and
bad doctors were also really terrible, just like in any other professions I
guess. Without those human attributes though, those bad doctors can't really
help anyone as it is the main force driving them to help seek the right cures
for the patients. Worse, they may contribute to misdiagnoses and malpractices
that are the prevalent sources for medical related accidents and deaths.

As individuals, we should all educate ourselves so we are more equipped in
working together with the doctors when issues arise, rather staying in the
unknown and completely leave your own fate to the hand of luck.

------
harry8
Doctors are turning to medical journals to fill in gaps in their knowledge.

Doctors are referring to textbooks to fill in gaps in their knowledge.

Any doctor who isn't doing that possibly is in the wrong profession. Indeed
most of what is learned in a medical degree is so the doctor can assess these
sources and embrace or reject them.

Doctors attend lectures at conferences. Always have. Now cheap video
distribution exists. So now sometimes virtually attending the lecture on
youtube that they otherwise would have not been able to see.

Surgical techniques are often better demonstrated than described, so videoing
them makes some sense. Watching videos of techniques that have the potential
to be better than what you are using is a very good thing. Assessing and
rejecting them if it turns out the technique isn't better is obviously what
any competent human being would do.

Quality control? Hell medical journals barely have that. Ask a statistician
about medical journal quality control - it's only driving policy accross all
of health care...

You have to assess sources, evidence, outcomes etc. for literally anything
that is new or you suspect might need revisiting. Any doctor who can't do that
effectively should not be using that particular source or possibly should not
be a doctor at all.

The practioners of every single complex job have "gaps in their knowledge" \-
nobody knows everyting. Most if not all people faced with having to perform
tasks where they don't have perfect knowledge are using resources to study.
Online video is just one, very effective in certain cases, way of increasing
knowledge.

CNBC may not be a way of increasing knowledge based on this article and I
assess a youtube video demonstrating the reading of this article is something
I might reject as being useful.

~~~
joatmon-snoo
And honestly, VHS tapes of recordings have been around forever:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0896401774](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0896401774)

------
sxg
I'm a current medical resident, and I have absolutely used YouTube to fill in
the gaps. Just a few days ago during lunch, I watched a 3 minute video on how
to remove a PICC line before taking one out of a patient. I have taken PICC
lines out before, but I just wanted a quick refresher before doing another
one. I've also used YouTube to improve my physical exam skills. In the real
world, you just don't get enough abnormal findings in certain areas to learn
quickly. For example, although ACL tears are common, I haven't seen more than
a few due to the context I work in. I use YouTube to see more examples of
these kinds of abnormal findings.

While I was in medical school, the vast majority of my education came from
online resources, YouTube, question banks, or ancillary books that were not
part of the official curriculum. If you go to any medical student in the US
today, they'll be familiar with the four key resources: UWorld (massive bank
of USMLE board questions), First Aid (reference text book containing key
information for board exams), Pathoma (video series teaching histology and
pathology created by a University of Chicago pathologist), and SketchyMedical
(another video series of visual mnemonics to help you memorize microbiology
and pharmacology facts). There are also community driven projects such as
Zanki and Brosencephalon, which are Anki decks with 25,000+ cards containing
info needed for board exams. Another popular YouTube channel is Armando
Hasudungan, who illustrates medical concepts aimed towards med students.

The med school I went to and many others are moving away from the traditional
lecture-based model. Lectures at my school were offered, but they were
optional and attendance was usually <25% of our class as the quality was
notoriously poor. My med school classmates and I found learning much, much
more effective with this hands off approach. This does call in to question the
value and role of a medical school today. Now that I'm a resident working with
other residents who went to med schools all across the US, I'm realizing that
most of us just forced our way through the official curriculum and did most of
our "real" learning using the same resources I mentioned above.

~~~
JshWright
> I'm a current medical resident, and I have absolutely used YouTube to fill
> in the gaps.

I pull up online sources pretty regularly in the back of an ambulance. Most
often to look up the details of some more obscure medication or condition in
the pt's medical history. Generally I try to do it out of eyeshot of the pt...

------
fedups
Sometimes I google home maintenance videos for information on a project, and I
need to spend a lot of time looking for a certain level of quality of the
source since I'm a complete amateur. I'll often want to confirm by looking for
multiple videos and making sure the sources converge on some basic points
since I have so little background.

But since I'm much more knowledgeable about certain programming or
mathematical techniques, I can do much quicker searches to refresh my memory
since my BS filter is going to go off pretty quickly, and I can verify the
truth of a source based on a more extensive background.

The fear mongering in this article requires you to assume that doctors are
much more like amateur carpenters clicking on links at random rather than
highly trained practitioners with years of education in their field.

------
soared
I have a friend in medical school who I asked about googling/etc, and he sent
me a good article. Related and way less alarmist (quote from my link, not the
article)

> Enter the online world of medical references that your doctor uses instead
> of Google: UpToDate, DynaMed, Current, and many more. These are medically
> sound, evidence-based databases that tell doctors most things they need to
> know to be able to treat just about any patient according to the most up to
> date guidelines.

[http://www.linacolucci.com/2016/08/the-secret-google-used-
by...](http://www.linacolucci.com/2016/08/the-secret-google-used-by-doctors-
and-unknown-to-patients/)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
{Fry-meme:} Not sure if joking or not aware that link is dead. [it links to a
dreamhost page with a bad SSL cert and no content.]

------
arkades
Jfc no one is learning surgery from a video. A resident looks up an article or
a textbook chapter, watches a video, then assists - and when they’re
assisting, they’re better prepared because all of the above. Then they watch a
video to refresh. If the video is nonsense, they’ll know right quick. They’ll
assist many times before they take lead, and will take lead with a supervisor
many times before ever going solo.

The headline makes it sound like someone is watching a YT video and then
walking into the OR to perform an operation.

~~~
notadoc
Not everything is taught in medical schools, which means there are gaps in
knowledge. That can be problematic when a particular unique approach is more
valid for a specific subset of patients. In those cases, the only way to learn
how to perform those variational procedures might be by watching it online.

Would the surgeon feel confident with that situation? That's another question
entirely.

------
strstr
There's a pretty cool "journal" called JOMI [0], which is basically peer-
reviewed videos of doctors performing common procedures. I actually watched
one of the videos there to assuage my fear of a fairly routine arthroscopic
procdure.

I suspect this is the type of thing most doctors are interested in seeing
people rely upon, rather than youtube. It's been vetted for quality. There are
obviously downsides (getting procedures to appear on this is more complicated
than just uploading a video to youtube), but it seems much harder to question
the quality.

[0] [https://jomi.com/](https://jomi.com/)

------
swiley
I used to really dislike youtube because I thought there was nothing but
people goofing off and ripped TV shows on it.

Honestly people are doing serious research on it, and besides that you can get
lectures or even just friendly monologues/QAs from experts on almost any
subject. It was MIT's math videos that convinced me to start watching it,
after that I found some of my favorite proffessor's lectures there too along
with a lot of graduate level stuff from other universities. Then there where
all the videos from amateur and professional scientists and musicians and so
on. The basics of my personal understanding of music theory came from a nearly
century old book I found in a used book store but it's grown a _lot_ thanks to
youtube.

I hate that it's controlled by a single company, and that they keep tearing
down the chemistry channels but while it's still no substitute for reading
papers when you get into really niche subjects (ex: molecular dynamics and
computational chemistry) the educational side of youtube is surprisingly
underrated.

~~~
asdff
Unless you know what to look for, the discovery on youtube for these videos is
terrible. I watched a lecture from my prof, 40 minute video with a couple
hundred views uploaded by an official university youtube account.

You'd expect the sidebar to be filled with similar 40 minute lectures uploaded
from similar university accounts with similar low viewer counts, but instead
the sidebar was filled with these zaney outlandish conspiracy theory videos.
They probably got preference on the sidebar because they contained all the
relevant keywords in their headings (not counting the obligatory "Hillary" or
"Satan" or "Lizard person" found in most of these titles), coupled with
_millions_ of views.

Sometimes I like to imagine a youtube where it's the university lecures that
get millions of views, not the far right tinfoil hat content that eventually
rears it's ugly head in every sidebar feed on the site.

------
m0zg
The good ol' "Google the Stack Overflow" method. Except when advice is bogus
people die. I frankly held doctors (and especially the very generously paid US
doctors) in much higher regard until I got older and had a chance to seriously
interact with a few. As far as I can tell unless the situation is blindingly
clear (in which case Googling the symptoms works about as well as a doctor),
they're basically guessing, often badly. To give just one example: I was once
suggested a shoulder surgery (with a 6+ mo recovery period) based on an
extremely blurry MRI of my shoulder where I'm pretty sure the doctor couldn't
really see anything. Because why the hell not take another $20K in revenue for
his practice, right? Ironically the shoulder pain went away in about 4 months
after I switched my sleeping position.

I now basically avoid doctors other than for the yearly checkup or if there's
something serious that Google can't fix (broken leg, or a prescription).

------
caycep
there isn't a "textbook" for a lot of these. AS a resident, we basically used
a combo of pubmed, uptodateonline.com, and a lot of it was the time spent w/
older docs and gleaming bits and pieces of info from whichever patient
happened to roll in or were scheduled that day. Haphazardly stochastic way of
learning, but there it is....

------
nycbenf
I recently finished cardiac rehab but when I was on the waiting list to start
my PCP told me "Just google cardiac rehab, find some videos and do them." The
videos I found were from the NHS. They were very different from what cardiac
rehab in the US was like, but they got me up and moving.

------
wilgertvelinga
A more curated and probably high quality alternative for surgeons and others
in the operating room: [https://incision.care](https://incision.care)

~~~
THJr
They could always head over to
[https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/](https://medicalsciences.stackexchange.com/)

Then again, they might wind up posting a question about a compound fracture
only for it to be closed as a duplicate with a link to something about an
impacted molar.

------
zby
OK - a lot of answers here are about "doctors using online resources to fill
up their knowledge gaps is totally normal" \- which is a fine point. But the
article is about a particular online resource not known for an a priori high
standard. The more interesting question is "How can doctors tell which videos
are valid and which contain bogus information?" \- and it is actually a quote
literally taken from the article. The situation is not very good:

""" For instance, one recent study found more than 68,000 videos associated
with a common procedure known as a distal radius fracture immobilization. The
researchers evaluated the content for their technical skill demonstrated and
educational skill, and created a score. Only 16 of the videos even met basic
criteria, including whether they were performed by a health-care professional
or institution. Among those, the scores were mixed. In several cases, the
credentials of the person performing the procedure could not be identified at
all.

Even more concerning, studies are finding that the YouTube algorithm is highly
ranking videos where the technique isn’t optimal. A group of researchers found
that for a surgical technique called a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, about
half the videos showed unsafe maneuvers. """

Online epistemology is more and more important and while our culture is trying
to catch up it is still behind. There is lots and lots of important phenomena
(for example
[https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood](https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood)).

By the way patients are also using online resources and encounter similar
problems: [https://medium.com/@zby/rational-patient-
community-6d3617dff...](https://medium.com/@zby/rational-patient-
community-6d3617dffcfe)

------
bashwizard
I had an anaphylactic shock a few years ago and started googling the symptoms
(no, I didn't have cancer after all) and ended up realizing very quickly that
I should probably go to the ER and get some antihistamine, so I did. The day
after I booked a meeting with a doctor and while sitting there talking about
my symptoms and reasons for getting the anaphylactic shock the doctor was on
google and even the same web site I was looking at the day before.

So I told him "I already know that because you're basically just reciting the
very same web site I was looking at yesterday before going to the ER but I
felt that I should see an actually doctor about it. So do you have any clue
what could have caused the shock or should I just pay close attention to what
I eat, drink etc just like it says on that web site and hope for the best that
I find the food that I'm allergic to?"

He had no clue. Thank god for free healthcare (oh well, tax paid universal
healthcare) in Sweden.

~~~
asdf333
I find one common misconception that programmers have is "everything in the
world has a root cause that we can understand". In the programming world
that's mostly true.

So when a doctor or medical professional doesn't know the exact reason for
something (e.g. why did I get x?) many start thinking the doctor is
stupid/useless/incompetent. Well it turns out that medicine is still a very
inexact science and there are many things that are not well understood.

~~~
stevenhuang
> everything in the world has a root cause that we can understand

But that indeed is true of reality. The difference is in the likelihood of
being able to find that root cause.

I think any programmer can appreciate the difficulty of finding answers in a
domain that proves elusive.

Take the example of a spaghetti codebase. You know the answer is there
somewhere, but you wouldn't fault someone for not being able to give you an
answer.

So I wouldn't be so certain. In fact I feel many would understand the
difficulties and not disparage a doctor for being unable to give an exact
diagnosis.

~~~
braindeath
> Take the example of a spaghetti codebase. Take the example of a spaghetti
> codebase.

I think this actually just further proves the GP more than correct.

Comparing the complexity of determining the root cause of some disease
processes and biological processes in general to a "spaghetti codebase" just
underscores the disconnect that programmers and engineers have with some of
the complexity in nature. There is no manmade codebase shitty or otherwise,
even large enough to approximate the complexity of understanding even some of
the more rudimentary biological mechanisms, let alone extending that to actual
clinical disease presentation.

In clinical medicine we don't necessarily think "the answer is in there
somewhere", we don't know the answer, and further the full answer is most
likely unknowable in our lifetime, so effectively as far as providing care is
concerned, the answer really isn't there.

~~~
stevenhuang
The point of the comparison was only to illustrate the shared experience of
lacking answers due to complexity, nothing more.

I am aware of and entirely sympathetic to the order of magnitude differences
in complexity between biological processes and digital constructs.

It was not my intention to compare the two as if they were on equal footing,
though I can see how it can be interpreted that way--my fault.

------
mc32
I just hope the “courseware” isn’t random videos with unsubstantiated claims.

That is to say I’d hope what they are watching is current and medically
accepted information.

The article does claim that most of the ones accessed by profs are produced by
professionals in their field —apparently in an effort to market their skills
and help other professionals...

But one would hope there is _some_ vetting going on.

~~~
omegaworks
most information medical doctors get in their training about nutrition is
generally unsubstantiated

~~~
mywittyname
Nutrition science is _hard_. It has long timelines and relies largely on self-
reporting and meta-analysis because it's unethical to study humans like we
would mice and perform actual control studies.

That's not even getting into the monetary and political factors involved. It
took _decades_ for society to agree that smoking was bad for your health,
because of all the money paid to bribe scientists, doctors, and politicians.
And this was _obvious_. The food industry is orders of magnitude larger in
monetary terms, and involves far more people, many with political influence
_worldwide_.

I give doctors a pass on this.

~~~
thaumasiotes
It would make sense to give them a pass on not knowing correct nutritional
information if they admitted they didn't know correct nutritional information.
The situation that actually obtains is that they're passing off incorrect
information as correct. That shouldn't be excused by the fact that knowing
correct information is difficult.

~~~
PeterisP
It's absolutely justified to pass off the information that _according to our
best current knowledge_ is the approprate recommendation as of now - the fact
that knowing the underlying correct information is difficult, and noone knows
for certain if it's entirely correct or there are more nuances to be found
doesn't mean that we should just shrug and act as if we have no information
whatsoever. We do have some data that allows us to make useful decisions that
are more likely than not to be correct. As long as that's the best we have, we
should use that information.

------
Vysero
YouTube got me through engineering school. This is just how people learn now.
Books have their place but in reality I think YouTube and videos in general
are a much more versatile learning tool for students or anyone for that
matter. Personally, I am glad doctors are taking advantage of this new and
incredibly valuable resource.

------
bartread
I don't really see why this is surprising or horrifying: I turn to YouTube all
the time to fill gaps in my knowledge, or watch talks/lectures (I've been
enjoying Strangeloop recently, along with assorted DIY content).

As for quality control, this is what our critical faculties are for. I have no
data but suspect good critical thinking skills correlate well with being a
good doctor, so I don't worry about these people picking up information from
YouTube.

Bringing this back to programming, others have mentioned StackOverflow.
StackOverflow has descended into a cesspool of crowdsourced ignorance but
nevertheless it's still possible for competent developers to find useful
information there.

On the flipside, if StackOverflow disappeared tomorrow, all the bad
programmers finger-vomiting garbage "information" across every question would
continue to be bad programmers.

------
jonwachob91
10+ years ago if you weren't familiar with the procedure you were performing,
you'd just read a medical journal article about that procedure ( one that had
been vetted by a peer-review process ).

10 years from now, will we see high level research from CERN being published
to YT before it goes to Nature (or some other journal)?

~~~
viraptor
10+ years ago you'd have to spend considerable time and money getting to the
journal article if you even could do that and it was available in your
language. Then, you'd still have dry description, not a video of an actual
procedure.

(I'm still showing people scihub because they just wouldn't access the papers
otherwise)

~~~
Scoundreller
It’s usually okay if you work at a hospital with academic affiliations.

Even if you aren’t, you do get access to the university’s library if you take
some students.

Usually.

------
zelon88
The problem that I see is not so much that the quality of videos on YouTube is
lacking, it is that the quality of officially sanctioned videos is lacking. Or
that the availability of officially sanctioned videos of high enough quality
are not readily available to the masses.

> ..."The researchers evaluated the content for their technical skill
> demonstrated and educational skill, and created a score. Only 16 of the
> videos even met basic criteria, including whether they were performed by a
> health-care professional or institution."

As I understand it; professionals compared the techniques used to the
techniques as they are taught in classrooms and textbooks and found that the
techniques used in the video would not have resulted in a passing grade in a
classroom environment.

Assuming that is true then the root cause isn't low quality YT videos. That is
a symptom of the problem that the learning materials provided in classroom
environments are not providing enough educational value to students in the
first place.

I'm not in the medical field, but I've watched the struggle and politics of
people fighting through medical school. It is grueling. If it's anything like
tech then maybe 65% of it will apply in the real world and 15% you won't ever
need to use in the first place. It's also going to be loaded with advanced
technical jargon and put an incredible cognitive stress on students to teach
otherwise simple, menial tasks while stressing statistics and verbatim policy
while completely losing the spirit of those statistics and policies.

So to fix the issue, researchers should be studying these YT videos to
determine what makes them so informational and engaging.

With car or computer repair videos people familiar with the subject matter
will skip the non-essential information, focusing cognitive resources on the
parts they need to clarify most. Students can focus on their own deficiencies
without having to waste energy on arbitrary and irrelevant information.

------
ratfaced-guy
Is there a Stack Exchange site for medical professionals? If not, why not?

~~~
commandlinefan
What's more frightening is that we may be 10 years away from doctor "boot
camps".

~~~
scarejunba
Well, that's not necessarily frightening.

We haven't established that no-healthcare is superior to healthcare from
"obviously boot-camped doctor". It may open up access to healthcare to more
people.

~~~
tehjoker
Terrifying. Instead of funding the healthcare system to make it cheap or free
like every other developed country, lower the quality and suck more money out
of the indigent.

~~~
scarejunba
I reckon one is more tractable than the other.

~~~
tehjoker
Given the nearly existential problems we are facing, it's really time we
started thinking bigger.

------
Mathnerd314
> Medical experts say this content hasn't been particularly well curated, in
> part because it's an expensive process.

There are lots of paid medical video sites, e.g. a quick search turns up
[https://www.madeformedical.com/](https://www.madeformedical.com/) and
[https://cine-med.com/](https://cine-med.com/). Presumably these are better
curated than YouTube and may even go through some type of peer-review process.

~~~
JackRabbitSlim
I'll bet every one of them (tries to) absolve themselves from liability
through the use of their posted materials. An unverifiable promise that it's
somehow a more reliable source than "DuceDangler73s" youtube video on
performing a colonoscopy is no comfort.

------
ssully
I have a feeling this is common in nearly every field these days.

While not equivalent to a medical procedure, I had some furnace issues last
year. I was able to do a lot of repairs myself with a mix of reading forum
posts and youtube videos. I ended up having to call a furnace tech for an
issue that was outside my comfort area at the time, but I was still able to
communicate my issue with him more intelligently because of the knowledge I
learned from watching a few videos.

~~~
Scoundreller
Or in my case, I’ve armed myself with enough knowledge to prove that the
mechanics at the dealership are either incompetent or lobotomized flow-chart
followers.

Like, I already told you I swapped the coils and spark plugs around. The
problem didn’t move, so they can’t be the problem!

------
wnmurphy
When I see my doctor, there's an understanding between us. We both know that
professionals like software engineers and doctors look up the answers
constantly. I don't expect him to know everything, nor is that even possible.
I do trust him to know how to find the right answer, and think structurally
through a set of symptoms, and debug them.

------
GordonS
I've had GPs and consultants alike google all sorts of things (even opioid
conversion charts)... I have to say, I don't like it! I know they can't know
_everything_ , but quite often it feels like it's something they _should_
know, or at the very least have a trusted source/calculator bookmarked for.

------
dillonmckay
Here is a Harvard Business Review podcast that discusses how new doctors train
for robotic surgery.

[https://hbr.org/ideacast/2019/08/how-robots-and-ai-are-
chang...](https://hbr.org/ideacast/2019/08/how-robots-and-ai-are-changing-job-
training)

------
barkingcat
Who in this day and age and in a job that gives access to the internet doesn't
use it for checking up on things for their job?

Developers do it on a near constant basis. Computer techs do it, secretaries
use this, lawyers use it constantly...

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martyvis
News at 11: Professionals (and everyone else) uses the internet to plug gaps
in their knowledge. (We used to make do with books, journals,schools, guilds,
coffee shops)

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sharadov
I am pretty sure there are quacks in certain parts of the world who are seeing
these videos and performing surgeries on people.

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booleandilemma
Would you want a doctor that does not go to YouTube/Google for gaps in their
training?

Are you assuming they’ll have no gaps?

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vmchale
They only mentioned VR for surgeons in passing, but such a development would
be interesting.

~~~
npo9
I think haptic feedback and novel controls are just as important as the VR.
How much force does it take to [do critical part of open heart surgery]?
What’s the exact hand motion for [neurosurgeon technique]? It would be great
if a doctor got to practice the hand motions in as near to real life
conditions as possible. I suspect insurance companies will insist surgeons
keep up with vr/haptic training if it is found that it increases success rates
of surgey.

~~~
asdff
That's what the cadaver is for in med school. Haptic feedback developers would
have to rip open hundreds of human bodies at various places and measure the
force and texture to get anything vaguely accurate.

Not to mention that this would avoid all the rawness of surgery; the distinct
smell of blood and shit, the warm pulsing body of the patient, oddly presented
internals and what they mean, knowledge that nicking an artery could end a
patients life in minutes.

Maybe the better angle is figuring out how to get more cadavers in the hands
of med students or docs for practice.

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jeffreyrogers
I know a surgery resident who says it's common to google info during
surgeries.

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chris72205
Perhaps they will call this curated content "YouTube Med"

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chewz
Good move. Patients are doing this for some years now.

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take_a_breath
Doctors are just like the rest of us!!

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asimovfan
Yes. This is what internet is for.

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codingslave
Doctors are the most overrated profession of all time. Before any kind of
diagnosis, medical procedure, or conversation about anything specific, I do a
ton of research. I read the latest publications, the drug interactions, the
human biology, etc. When I go in there and question the doctor, they usually
dont know the half of what I bring up. They prescribe the same thing to the
same set of symptoms basically every time, without much capacity to take in
the nuances of some condition. These people need to lose their status in
American society and be brought down to skepticism, half of the doctors in
hospitals became doctors for the status. Computers cannot replace these people
fast enough, I trust very few. If anything, I think that the recent trend of
data driven medicine will expose the medical industry for what it is, most of
these drugs and procedures have no positive effect on the patients. In a ton
of cases, the outcomes and long term ramifications of different treatments are
never recorded and analyzed on a wide scale. Very few drugs we have do
anything at all but cover up the symptoms.

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akersten
This is crock.

The reason you see the same treatments and basic medicines and panels each
time you go to the GP is because your problems are pedestrian compared to what
doctors actually train for. Most likely, you're not even being seen by someone
with an M.D. - casual checkups are often beneath their paygrade.

Doctors undergo a decade of specialized training in order to diagnose and
treat issues far beyond anything that you can Just Google. Determining the
factors affecting which treatments to apply, considering the tradeoffs, and
making the right call are skills that AI will not achieve in our lifetime, no
matter how many VC-funded tech-bro AI startups try.

If you could spend a day in the shoes of an aspiring medical resident, working
80-hour weeks and studying for board exams at the same time, you'd count your
lucky stars that we don't license the software profession like we do medicine.
Maybe we should.

~~~
x2f10
I hope you're not a medical professional. If an individual has a problem
(mental or physical), it is never pedestrian, beneath a paygrade, or reason to
avoid a personalized treatment plan. If you feel this way, go into research
and do not interact with another patient ever again. Sickening attitude.

~~~
akersten
Let me be clear: there are conditions that are routine, and whose treatment is
deferred to roles that are not as specialized as a doctor. That does not mean
that the provider/patient interaction is any less personable just because the
treatment is standardized.

Treating the sniffles does not require a personalized care plan in the
majority of cases. You'll get the bog standard treatment of the symptoms,
which is actually the best we can do. It would be an institutional waste to
personalize that kind of care for each patient and provision an M.D. each time
-- you'd actually be putting other patients at risk, with more complicated
problems, who critically need that doctor's experience instead.

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faissaloo
What might it take to create medical hackspaces?

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autoexec
For regular folks? There are online places where people talk about their
issues, exchange information, even hack their medical devices, but the thin
line between a community of interested parties helping each other out with
their health concerns and practicing medicine without a license will make it
risky for spaces set up to do more than very general education. The liability
issues alone would make me hesitate.

~~~
faissaloo
Yeah, I wonder what it would take to get something like that going. It'd be
risky for sure, but it's still interesting to consider.

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buboard
just don't let big pharma find out!

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wso
Please don't

