Professional training and development are critical. Police officers, educators, orthodontists,
painters, chief executives, musicians and chefs all need ongoing training to
remain current. Job requirements evolve,
and we must adapt. An accountant who
hasn’t kept up with new or anticipated tax law changes might not account for
much when computing your tax obligation or refund.
Physicians need to be dedicated to ongoing professional
development as much as any other occupation.
Patients often wonder if their doctor is up to date. Does your primary care physician know about
new medications for your condition?
Does your orthopedist use the latest medical hardware when replacing your hip joint? Is your anesthesiologist
using the same old laughing gas to put you asleep? Is your dermatologist’s knowledge of his
field only skin deep?
In the medical profession, there has been a
paradoxical emphasis on reducing professional training. Here’s what I mean. In hospitals, it is no longer true that every
patient relies upon a registered nurse, or R.N., for nursing care. Now, lower level personnel such as nurses aides and other care
assistants are frequently utilized. I’ll
let the reader surmise what motivated this hospital ‘reform’. Nurse practitioners now roam the hospital wards,
technically under the authority of a physician who is seeing his own patients
in an office miles away. Why see your
own primary care physician, when the ‘minute clinic’ on the street corner is open for
business. These clinics are conveniently
housed in pharmacies so that any antibiotics prescribed, which we hope and pray
are truly necessary, can be purchased on site.
Who should be doing your colonoscopy? Do you prefer a trained gastroenterologist,
or would you be satisfied with a nurse who has been trained in how to
technically use the instrument, as some cost cutters have advocated? Even a casual reader might appreciate that competency
in a colonoscopy, heart catheterization or knee arthroscopy extends far beyond
the technical requirements of the procedures.
Gastroenterologists are similar to Navy SEALS. We both train to a knife’s edge and do all that we
can to stay razor sharp. To my patients,
I want to reassure you that staying current in colonoscopy is my life’s
mission. The training manual pictured below is
never out of reach. Feel better?
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