Why are so many doctors technology illiterate?
Title basically. I’m about midlife crisis age (lol) and I’ve been on computers and technology since I could walk. What is with all these doctors who are barely older than me who can barely use the Internet, don’t know how to type or what an adblocker is? I don’t feel like I can trust a doctor who is ok with malware coming in because they doesn’t run a free adblock or even DNS block. I mean wth?
It’s focus. A person can only know so many things and it takes a lot of basic science knowledge (Biology, chemistry, etc.) building upon itself over and over to learn medicine. Technology isn’t really a part of learning medicine so the entirety of be becoming a doctor kind of leaves out a lot of digital skills.
It's the same reason most computer science majors can't (sucessfully) do surgery.
They spent 8 years focusing completely on their field of expertise and have been in high demand once they start working.
There's nothing about a medical school curriculum that really teaches about technology. Why would you assume that they would know more than the average person about a thing that's outside of their field?
It's a common fallacy to believe people that are doctors (or have a PhD) are really smart. They know one specific thing really well, anything outside of that one thing they are as smart as any random person.
Specifically for medical, there's a few other reasons. Medical software is often garbage, a doctor's day to day experience with computers is not great. This doesn't make doctors want to learn more about computers. Doctors get trained by older doctors, so it's going to take longer for those that aren't hostile to computers to get into teaching and how to use computers in a beneficial way. This is just barely starting to happen, I doubt many teaching staffs are completely pro computer, but at least some are.
Medical software can also be deliberately garbage, and proprietary, to milk it for all its worth in support fees.
I couldn't say for sure, but I've seen something similar happen in the few people I know becoming medical doctors or in other doctoral programs. These programs are very intense and incredibly stressful. A truly amazing amount of knowledge is required to complete these programs. I think it's a lot harder to keep abreast of almost any topic that isn't related to your doctorate while in these programs and the pressure to commit the knowledge to memory can easily be overwhelming, which makes some sense, considering the circumstances.
I don't feel being unaware of adware blockers disqualifies someone from doing good medical work, the two simply aren't related. Heck. I'm in sales. Doctors often make terrible sales agents. Should I fault them because they don't understand something that's so simple for me? No, it's a different field I'm glad they know about their expertise well and I don't really need them to understand how to set up a PiHole.
What does concern me is the idea of doctoral students using AI to ease their study burden. I think that could have dire consequences.
This raises a lot of good points. My brother went through the medical program and probably did more study in his undergraduate/post grad than id be capable of in a lifetime. The workload they do just to get their degree is insane.
Its truly maddening. I live with someone doing a non-medical doctorate and I'm good friends with an M.D. student. The amount of time and focus required is astounding. I'm grateful that people take the effort and have the dedication, but, fuck, I need more free time in my life than what can be afforded to these people. Especially during the residency. They treat you so poorly in these programs, it would be called abuse in any other field.
I’m in a similar camp having been around computers and tech since I was a kid. I think people under estimate how much age can factor into your ability to learn new things. We grew up with computers essentially as they became main stream and rolled out into schools/libraries. My parents got physically assaulted by adults in school if their cursive wasn’t up to par.
So not only were they entering adulthood/adults by the time these devices became mainstream but their entire life they were trained for a different skills/mindset. Sure some of them jumped on (I randomly have an uncle who is a farmer out in rural Aus who gave us CD-ROM games as a kid). The rest had no incentive initially and how much time does any of us have to learn a new skill outside work? Then they realise it isn’t just a fad or something just for taxes and are immediately behind the curve as it rapidly progressed. Doctors still use faxes here, write handwritten notes extensively, use prescription pads and would probably use pens/pencils exclusively if practice management software weren’t so useful. Plus think of how much Windows alone as an OS has changed since 95, let alone all the office suites, web and hardware that goes along with it.
Don’t get me wrong I also catch myself thinking “shit you'd think these people would learn the fundamentals of something they rely so heavily on to make money” but also think they deserve a bit of understanding too. We got lucky we grew up alongside it.
Computer tech UX (user experience) was dumbed down to reach "everyone" (aiming at kids and giving the middle finger to anyone over 40 since the 2000s), dismissing any need for "computer literacy". Why should doctors, or the general public, learn about adblockers when they assume everything they see on screen is "just the way it is"? Computers and phones work for what they want to do and, for the most part, that's enough.
Perhaps a good analogy is cars: most people who own one have no fucking clue how it works and wouldn't be able to change the headlights alone. Is it worth learning enough about the car to understand what's going on? Depends on the person.
That’s a great point I hadn’t considered. Why would they even think to change it, that’s how it works. I wonder if I can extend that thought to other aspects of my life to see where I’m blind to that notion.
Just think about all the things you "don't care about" or that you assume to "know what matters", chances are that you're blind to several details about them. Could be just about anything, from beekeeping to law to heavy industry logistics
Hospitals have IT departments for a reason. IT is not a doctors job you talk computer stuff to a non-data science/bioinformatics involved medical person and you're going to get a blank stare. I'm on these IT threads and I still don't really understand things, like I can understand when explained but I lose the knowledge fairly quickly because I don't use it. It's not relevant to doing my job.
I'm a postdoc so tangential to the MDs/DOs and I can see my IT skills getting worse as time goes on. I have so many other priorities in order for my career to progress that something has to give. I want to switch to and learn Linux but I work 60h a week and spend the rest taking care of the baby, dog, and house (wife works 80h and helps where she can).
It doesn't help that due to the existence of incompetents our work systems are pretty locked down and as stupid-proofed as they can be. Microsoft keeps moving or getting rid of the functionality I used to know so I'm slowly losing capability to do things without looking it up and we all know how search has gone to shit. Meanwhile HR switches systems every couple years so there's like 5 different softwares I need to know for training, taxes, and other things. There are like 3 different ways to VPN in using personal or work computers as they're doing ye olde make a new standard to replace old standard and now there are 2 standards and what systems you can access are different between what VPN you use for some reason.
We all know it's a mess but because downtime and system changes can literally affect lives even small changes are onerous. Meanwhile 90% of the people are underpaid.
Earlier in my Design career the focus was on the software tool and design aspects. While I sat at a computer more than 8 hours a day for 20 years, I did not know much about the hardware or operating system. People assumed because ai knew the basics of file management, that I could fix computers.
Its different now, COVID meant changing activities/hobbies. So for a while I had 3 raspberrypis, a NAS and two home built computers, all installed with Linux. And tons of random PC parts LOL. Just in the midst of downsizing and selling pieces, because I collected too much hardware.
I’ve watched doctors and nurses use software at varying degrees of functionality. The software UX can make or break the effectiveness. If the software was designed without continuous input from the frontline users, they will struggle.
If the software was designed without continuous input from the frontline users, they will struggle.
A doctor in my country coded his own practice management software and now it’s the leading PMS in the country. I like to assume it went something along the lines of “fuck this shit I’ll just code my own rather than keep using this trash”.
In general it’s pretty hard to update medical software. It’s all regulated by the FDA and you’ll need to go through all the paperwork and validation to change things.
They are?
Do you have stats for this? Because all my doctors (who range from 30 to 60) are very savvy. They use apps on their phones for auto-dictation, do video calls with me, are pulling up reference material and links while we talk, etc.
During my last visit my doc pulled out a $2000 dermatology camera attached to a tablet to take color-accurate photos of skin. It was wifi connected and sent the images directly to my records.
I think we need a trustworthy study to understand this.
I worked IT for a decent sized hospital network in a decent sized city for about 5 years, and yeah pretty much universally doctors were terrible with technology. Maybe that's changed somewhat in the 10 years since I was fired by that shithole, but I'm pretty confident in agreeing with OP's assessment.
That said, I wouldn't expect the general public to know about ad blockers or DNS, and doctors would be no exception to that.
I don’t expect the doctors themselves to know DNS or even adblockers for that matter, but at least have the IT infra in place to manage it for them. With all of the HIPAA requirements, I would have thought a more thorough IT practice would be required.
That sounds fantastic. The most technology I see many of them using is an audio recording device that essentially just writes the notes for them verbatim, presumably to avoid having to type on the keyboard. Is being able to touch type while talking to someone at the same time that unique of a skill?
Yeah it’s scary. Nurses too. So many that struggle with navigating the EHR and basic computer troubleshooting (have you tried turning it off and on or swapping out the batteries?). Also documenting with amazingly bad English lol. Also doctors doing dictation charting, which you can tell who’s using it by all the silly mistakes