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Abstract
Digitalization of medical resources has completely revolutionized medical education.
Nowadays, medical information is readily accessible online. If a doctor needs to learn
about Lesch–Nyhan syndrome, he or she can just search online – thousands of digital
resources, explaining everything from simple pathophysiology to the latest genetic
research into the condition, can be found; even videos of patients with the condition
are available and easily located by using a search engine such as Google. Could there
possibly be any downsides to this?
One argument is that traditional textbook-based medical teaching has been around since
as early as the The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, written in 3000 BC.1 In contrast,
how long have digital medical resources been available? The maximum timeframe may
be 25 years, at best. In fact, ancient teaching methods have stood the test of time
and have created some of the best physicians in their eras. If ancient methods have
been proved to be so successful in the past, is there a need to change? After all,
physicians love “evidence-based” methodologies. There are over 5,000 years of evidence
supporting traditional medical teaching versus a few years of evidence supporting
the value of digital medical teaching.
Moreover, one of the proposed positives of digitalizing medical education is the ease
of access of information. For example, it is common for students (and even doctors)
to use the Google search engine to find information on ward rounds. Information ranging
from normal values for hormones, pathophysiology of conditions, or even differential
diagnosis is available. Finding information so quickly online would have been impossible
10 years ago. So, how did students and doctors of old access this information? The
answer is simple: in the past, they memorized this information. The information was
therefore readily accessible in their memories. We argue that the increased accessibility
of information today has led medical professionals to become lazy. We do not have
to work hard for information anymore; therefore, there is less value in spending time
and effort to commit it to memory. The question of how many times a medical professional
has searched a disease online and has been able to readily find out everything about
it, only to forget a short while later, needs to be asked.
Another downside to digitalizing medical education is the danger that even the practical
side of learning medicine is transferred away from the wards of hospitals. Listening
to heart murmurs on YouTube,2 watching open surgery through Google Glass,3 and practicing
communication skills over Skype4 are some examples of current online learning. However,
being a good physician is hugely dependent on real-life experiences, not digital “counterfeit”
experiences. An audio clip of a heart murmur will never be able to emulate the experience
of carefully positioning a stethoscope and hearing a murmur from a live, beating heart.
Unfortunately, it is much easier and cost effective to search for literature on heart
murmurs on the Internet than it is to experience it in real life. Digital resources
can therefore serve to create dangerous shortcuts in the education of doctors.
Conclusion
To end lets refer back to the father of medicine and the Hippocratic Oath: “I will
reverence my master who taught me the art”.5 Will the master trainers for the next
generation of doctors be Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube? How absurd is that proposition?
What would Hippocrates say?
Journal ID (publisher-id): Advances in Medical Education and Practice
Title:
Advances in Medical Education and Practice
Publisher:
Dove Medical Press
ISSN
(Electronic):
1179-7258
Publication date Collection: 2015
Publication date
(Electronic):
13
October
2015
Volume: 6
Pages: 581-582
Affiliations
Department of Medicine, Imperial College Medical School, London, UK
Author notes
Correspondence: Osama Al-jibury, Department of Medicine, Imperial College Medical
School, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, UK, Email
oa1710@
123456ic.ac.uk
The full terms of the License are available at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from
Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed.