| | | For decades I have said that medicine is upside down. GPs have to have the huge knowledge. A specialist wart remover needs a narrow knowledge. Specialization is cheap and easy. Bright 15 year olds could be useful specialists by the time they are a month older. They would be apprenticed to a specialist and in no time they'd know 80% of what's needed. By the time they are 20 they would be seasoned experts. By the time they got their wisdom teeth they'd have wisdom in the field.
<Incidentally, some of the best and smartest PAs and NPs I met weren't even interested in Primary Care. They preferred to work for Cardiologists, Nephrologists, and (even) Neurosurgeons. They are smart - it's easier to learn a narrow field. Primary care seems easy, but it's much harder.>
It's back to front at present. Students stay at school until they get their wisdom teeth. They learn everything, only specializing in their declining years. They should apprentice young, specialize then, and expand to general knowledge later. They'd get cash flow while young, be useful immediately, get to know the business and whether it suits them while young, and generalize as much as they like as they get older.
GPs have to know whether it's meningitis, lymphoma, melanoma and never get it wrong. At present they think it's a cold, just a swollen lymph node, or a freckle. The GP should be top of the heap in expertise. They would then pass the patient on to cheaper specialists for the detail work such as a knee replacement, or bone cancer treatment, depending on what the GP found.
Mqurice |
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