In medical school, you learn very quickly that you can’t know everything. By the end of your first-year anatomy course, you’ll probably give up on learning the names of every part of the body, let alone the intricacies of how they function. As physicians, we must grow comfortable with our limitations. We seek help from our colleagues and try not to let our egos get in the way of patient care. We accept that no physician will ever master the entirety of his or her discipline.
But are physicians now expected to master other disciplines, such as software engineering and social work? If you read the popular press and even academic journals you may think so. I like to call this phenomenon, this growing body of subjects doctors “should” master, “Hippocratic capture.”
I was reminded of this new pressure most recently while reading this article in a New York Times blog. The author makes some excellent points. Medical curricula are relatively stagnant while our world rapidly changes. The best medicine will incorporate modern technology and respect for the socioeconomic factors that influence patients’ health. The author also complains that he sometimes feels as if he has only one tool in his toolbox: the biomedical framework. For many health problems, this feels like simply not enough.
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