Cooperation.
On Wednesday I attended an event that brought together students from two popular fields of study: medicine and computer science. While I quite enjoy the idea of people from different fields coming together, what I witnessed there was quite sad. These fields should work together, especially as technology is invading more and more into our daily lives, which affects our health. Healthcare relies heavily on technology, from computer-assisted monitoring to online databanks pertaining to people's history of illnesses and treatments. Medicine and computer science work together every day, so the students of these fields should also be able and willing to work together. That they generally are, but effective cooperation needs more than mere will. It requires knowledge of the other side.
While the computer scientists could easily define the differences between diagnosis with similar names, the medicine students had a very difficult time defining what a 'server', 'HDD', or even a 'transistor' is. And I do mean that people did not know what these things are, not to mention what they do. Sure, hardware assembly is not something anyone should be good at, but one should have at the very least a vague idea about what is sitting in their laps, why they can read e-mail from anywhere...
Not knowing these things hardly hurts other people as much as the people who don't know. To be able to use the newest and most efficient technologies you need to understand how to use them, what your actions cause. Technology, especially in healthcare, does not obey the 'something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it' rule. Doing the wrong thing can be the difference between life and death. Doing a very wrong thing can cause permanent damage to multiple patients, and possibly the people around them. This situation is not a new thing caused by the sudden explosion of technology. Getting an EKG is quite difficult and a single wrong move means not getting the right result. Yet a single EKG can be the basis of a diagnosis.
Another problem with not knowing much anything outside your field is simple communication. It is a popular stereotype that all a medical student does is studying. All night and all day, just to become a doctor someday. And so meeting non-med-school people ends up as a Simpsons line: 'Do you like... stuff?'. It just doesn't cut it. What dismays me is that sometimes the stereotype is spot-on. It is no secret that med school requires a lot of studying because there are lots of test, tons of material to be crammed, and your GPA matters. It is true for some other fields of study as well, but this should not keep people's world views to become extremely narrow. It is one to become a specialist, it is another to become an individual. Don't limit yourself.
Smart words.
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