>>>A combination of fear of lawsuits and the idea that technology is good.
>
>Agreed. Definitely there's pressure for medicine to move from the laying on of hands, to the reading of signals from machines. The more sucking of blood and pinging of machines, the better.
>
>We were taught that medicine is a combination of art and science, but it seems to me that many now have them the wrong way around. Judicious use of technology should be an art rather than a crude blunderbuss disguised as a scientific investigation, and comforting patients and families as they reach certain stages in their lives, properly is called behavioural science and needs to be taught and studied extensively to weed out the unsuited and provide an element in healthcare whose absence is perceived by so many without knowing what to call it.
>
>In fact, the best way to reduce cost and increase satisfaction, probably is to pay physicians more and allow them more time with patients. Harried human beings find it difficult to comfort others or take a decent history/listen to the patient. A meme to celebrate the "art" of diagnosis relying on keen observation and experience proceeding to confirmatory investigation, will spare many families a lot of grief. As will the House of God rule "if you don't take a temperature, you can't find a fever." Doesn't have the expected lay meaning- it means not to investigate things whose discovery will cause more distress rather than assist.

And all this is really the point of the book that I mentioned a couple of times. Another recent read was "Every Patient Tells a Story" by Lisa Sanders, MD. Besides being a doc at Yale Medical School, she was the medical consultant for House, MD. She writes at length about doctors not being taught to do physical exams, and the consequences thereof.

(Yeah, I read medicine-related books for pleasure.)

Tamar