4 upvotes, 3 direct replies (showing 3)
View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience, Medicine, Psychology
How do practicing physicians learn new advances in science and medicine? Is there a continuing medical education requirement, or is it common for them to read journal publications? Does the privatization of Healthcare incentivize profit over continuing education?
Comment by aTacoParty at 17/01/2024 at 17:45 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Every physician in the US is required to do CME (continuing medical education) credits to maintain their license. These include conferences, research, and classes. Often physicians will also do their own reading on topics they are interested in.
Additionally, doctors have resources available to help them keep up with new advances like UpToDate and DynaMed. These are similar to Wikipedia for medicine except all the editors are verified medical professionals.
Privatization incentives profits over everything.
Comment by c3fepime at 19/01/2024 at 22:19 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
As others said, there is a CME requirement. However, the amount of education needed to fulfill the requirement is not that great. The unfortunate reality is that many physicians simply *don’t* stay up to date very well on current best practices unless they are personally motivated to do so and/or work in a university/academic hospital setting.
For a random example: ICU patients with early kidney failure used to be treated with a low dose dopamine infusion (from belief that this improved blood flow to the kidneys), but a series of studies *over 20 years ago* found this to be ineffective and potentially harmful so it’s no longer recommended. However, I still occasionally see patients transferred from smaller hospitals who were receiving “renal dose dopamine”.
Comment by Mockingjay40 at 18/01/2024 at 21:21 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Often times clinicians also read papers on new advancements. Scientists and Engineers (like myself) work with clinicians during development of new treatments. This process takes a VERY long time