What happens when patients find out how good their doctors are? (2004)

Re:What happens when patients find out how good their doctor... by RachelF on Sunday December 03, 2017 @11:45PM (#15841496)

I agree. As an engineer or programmer, you tend to get immediate and pretty conclusive feedback about whether the system you are building works.

You can iterate and fix your mistakes.

My experience with the world of medicine is that it is way less scientific and evidence based. This is because it can be more complex, but it does lead to doctors being able to ignore the fact that their treatments don't work.

Bad doctors can bury their mistakes and blame other factors, whereas bad engineers quickly get found out.

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Re:What happens when patients find out how good their doctor... by taurath on Monday December 04, 2017 @12:27AM (#15841647)

I’m not so sure about that. How many programmers that are senior build up a system only to have it nearly fall to pieces after they leave?

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Re:What happens when patients find out how good their doctor... by lmm on Monday December 04, 2017 @08:53AM (#15843770)

Software maintainability is hard to measure and test, and programmers who are bad at writing maintainable software can hide in the noise. But we do at least have some level of objective accountability in terms of "can the program do the thing?" Doctors largely don't even have that much.

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Re:What happens when patients find out how good their doctor... by amrrs on Monday December 04, 2017 @01:30AM (#15841886)

I think that holds true for Politicians also especially since there is no standard framework to see whether what they have done/built had worked.

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