Newer or older doctors?

Imagine following all your doctor’s orders …but your illnesses get worse and worse. And no doctor can correctly diagnose what the root of the problem is. That is the story told in The NY Times article, The Healing Problem. The point of the article, as we see it, is not so much the tragedy the man who had to live for months without knowing what was causing him to get sicker and sicker --- but the fact that no doctor could explain why. Until, that is, one doctor—a 2nd year resident—kept researching for a possible cause.

As the article states:

It is a truism in medicine that the difficult diagnoses are most likely to be made by the oldest or the newest physicians. The oldest because they have seen so much, know what it’s not and also know, like Sherlock Holmes, that when everything else has been ruled out, what is left, no matter how unlikely, is probably the answer. The newest because they are fresh from the books and can follow the clues without a sense of just how unlikely the destination may be.

Is this really the case? Possibly.

Yes, the newer doctors probably wouldn’t automatically discard certain causes as unlikely because they’re not experienced enough--- and they would keep researching for a possible cause anywhere they can (perhaps even do a search on one of the search engines and mentioned in yesterday’s entry). However, we’re not too sure if the truism holds for the oldest doctors. Yes, they are the most experienced and they might rule that "what is left, no matter how unlikely, is probably the answer."But their experience may also be a liability. ( If anybody disagrees, please feel free to comment.)

One other point that was very important---the article stated, "For this family, like so many caught up in the care of a chronically ill member, going to the hospital had become just another family routine." We believe this will be more commonplace now with the baby boomers aging and their children and friends taking care of them. Currently, there are more and more families with multiple generations living under one roof. Whatever the reason---financial, efficiency for caregiving, etc---the fact remains that doctors should be treating not only the patient, but also the entire family. Each member of the family is a caregiver and they want to fight the illness together.