One of the greatest medical sermon of our times is “Doctors must constantly update their knowledge , Continuing medical education is as sacred as their profession ! If you are not updating your knowledge you cease to a doctor “
It is fashionable , but true to state modern medicine lacks humane care . Modern medicine is challenged by a huge technological , commercial onslaught where common sense takes the back seat
Hence , doctors need to renew not only their academic competence but also their ethical fitness every year !
Aggression could be the other name for modern medical care . For every new invention , treatment or guideline that is approved an equal number is shelved after few months or years for safety reasons.
Bulk of medical updates for current age physicians is nothing , but asking them to forget all those wrong things that has been meticulously uploaded in their brains in the recent past ( Recall the classical story of drug eluting stents )
If this is the case . . . then . . . what for we are updating ? and for what we are learning and forgetting ? and . . . how frequent we need to forget ? Of course , there is a big chunk of human tribe who can never master the art of forgetting ! Some mistakes are permanently etched in their terra byte hard disks .
Is there a place for backdating and discontinuing medical education ?
What man- kind needs at times of medical crisis , is not the current treatment but the correct treatment .It is our duty to find all those trustworthy drugs & treatment modalities that were sent to the gallows by the modern medical forces for various reasons !
If some of the gems in medicine are left behind in past “time domain” , it is mandatory for us to go back in time and catch it , adopt it and disseminate it !
Further , whenever the hyped “medical updating sessions ” turns out to be synonymous with adding nonsense (It is becoming all too common these days !) we should resist it by all means !
For many . . . Hippocrates and his medicine sounds dirty now !
If only we back-date our knowledge . . .
Todays youngsters can learn a secret that liver enlargement can be diagnosed easily with their hands , without waiting for a CT scan report !
If only we back-date our knowledge . . .
We can realise Aminophylline can save so many lives of cardiac failure , which our newer inotropic agents are struggling to accomplish .
If only we back- date our knowledge . . .
We can calmly manage acute MI with lignocaine even in a country side . Amiodarone unfairly replaced this efficient anti VT molecule for no academic reasons !
If only we back- date our knowledge . . .
We can advice simple non pharmacological intervention for stage 1 HT than prescribing the glamorous sartan molecules form a multinational ARB shoppe.
If only we back- date our knowledge . . .
We can promptly recognise cardiac failure without ordering for the error prone BNP . Back dating also helps us to under stand that post infarct angina is a glaring sign for presence of viable myocardium and prevent us from undertaking a 2000 $ PET excursion !
If only we back- date our knowledge . . .
We can send all our uncomplicated , asymptomatic STEMI patients ( in class 1 ) straight to their home rather than to cath lab play grounds !
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Dr.S.Venkatesan MD 