I have just finished taking my last major exam of medical school – Step 2 of the boards (including Step 2 Clinical Skills, or CS, which costs 1200 bucks, requires you to travel to one of a few cities in the country hosting it, and is sealed by a EULA that forbids me from talking about what the test was like), and am winding down my medschool career in the next few weeks. It’s about 2 weeks from Match Day (the 19th), when I’ll find out for sure where I will spend the next 5 or so years of my life. I’ll be sure to have a post up a little after noon that day when I find out what the answer is. And then, around May 17th, graduation day, I’ll be a medical doctor, ready to start internship (also known as the hardest year of your life).
One of the things I’ve found universal to all medical students is that we really want to be good doctors when we are finished with our training. I don’t think I’ve ever met a medical student who was in this career for the money (you’d be crazy), or for other selfish reasons. They tend to be hard working, dedicated, humble people who, if anything, are sickeningly sincere about wanting to help other people. Maybe that’s just my school, but my experience is, these folks want to do good in the world.
But another universal is that not all doctors will be able to avoid making mistakes. Doctors are human, they all will eventually make errors, and the goal of any profession dedicated to improving the human condition should be constant self-reflection and efforts at self-improvement. This is not a simple thing to do however. Medicine is complex, and quality of medical treatment is very difficult to assess. We’ve discussed before, using metrics in medicine is challenging, and often rather than studying medical quality you end up merely assessing the social demographics of the physicians’ patients.
So it is with interest that I see reading boingboing that lots of people are upset because some doctors are forcing their patients not to rate them on sites like RateMD.com by having them sign a contract forbidding them from doing so.
The arguments for and against this practice are fascinating. We tread into the mucky waters of free speech, free enterprise, the practice of medicine, and the practical problem of assessing physician quality…
More below the fold…
Continue reading “Rating your doctor online – is this a good idea?”