In these modern days in which
everything is available on internet, the case of medical knowledge is also not
different. Even me, a resident who is supposed to read original literature from
big fat books find it easy to Google it.
I am not ashamed to say it, but I
have become a big fan of Wikipedia. Even though I am not sure about its
accuracy, it is easy it get a superficial idea about a subject from it. But I
have to assure you that it is just literature. The real skill of a doctor comes
from practice and not by literature alone. So definitely it is not going to be
a substitute for doctor for treating illness.
Sometimes you get irritated by
patients who come to you saying” Doctor, I read in Wikipedia that the medicine
you prescribed is effective in only 5 percent of cases” or “the treatment
option you suggest is a failure in fifty percent cases”.
Once a father of a boy asked me
to comfort his boy suffering from hydrocephalus who was being taken to
operation theatre for a shunt placement. It was his third surgery as previous
two eventually got blocked.
So I asked him “why are you so
worried? You have already undergone two surgeries and you know the usual
procedures.”
He said to me “I know. But I read
in Wikipedia that this surgery is associated with fifty percent chance of
getting permanently paralysed.”
But he was smiling. I thought to
myself “brave boy”. He recovered uneventfully from surgery that time.
Another time a young gentleman
came to me when I was in Emergency room. He was having some intermittent pain
or burning sensation in penis or sometimes in abdomen at some nonspecific
points. All this started in two months and only factor I could pick out is his
marriage was fixed around the same time. He has already undergone ultrasounds
of abdomen, scrotum, urine cultures, microscopic examinations and NCCT abdomen,
which were all normal. Then I assured him, “don’t worry, you don’t have any
serious illness.”
Still he kept on asking “What is
the reason for this, there must be some reason for these symptoms.”
The only thing that came to my
mind then was “You can try searching in Wikipedia”
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