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Comment by kashunstva | Hacker News Reader

> My own learning project - learn Medicine "on the side". It seems ludcirous that we give up the keys to our health to doctors just so we don't have to learn 2 years of courses. Am going to fix that!

While I admire the drive to become knowledgeable in the field of medicine outside of a professional curriculum in the disciplines, I’m not aware of any curriculum that proposes competency as a medical doctor in two years. Though I haven’t practiced medicine in many years, I do have a degree in medicine and went through internship, residency and fellowship. Trust me, it was far more than two years. Further, I don’t see how you would be able to (legally) gain experience in any of a range of procedures without following the consensus training path.

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The first two years are the scientific part of a medical course.

The next two are more about interacting with a live patient in a variety of settings. Obviously this si useful.

But most of the harm created by the medical system and skewed doctor incentives (only 15 minutes to see you) can be averted by those 2 years. For example: knowing to e able to read a examination report means abiliy to ask questions immediately.

Can you tell me why doctors are totally useless in diagnosing extremely common issues like acid reflux. Why do GI specialists have no freaking clue what is causing acid reflux. Why do they not know what how exactly my a1c is relevant to heart disease instead of just prescribing me a statin.

I personally know couple of doctors who themselves are clueless in fixing their own chronic conditions. Let alone helping someone else.

Sure go to the doctor if you broke your arm but they are totally out of their depths if you have any chronic conditions. Not sure what exactly they study for like a decade if they don't have answers to almost anything.

Asking a doctor to diagnose and treat a chronic condition from a list of symptoms is like asking a detective to solve a crime from a list of evidence.

There is A LOT of additional legwork and investigation required to get to the truth even if you're brilliant Sherlock Holmes (and most won't be).

The best they can practically do in the 10 minutes they spend on your case, is try to treat symptoms.

And this is why you need to study Medicine!

https://meded.ucsf.edu/sites/meded.ucsf.edu/files/inline-fil...

> There is A LOT of additional legwork and investigation required to get to the truth even if you're brilliant Sherlock Holmes (and most won't be).

I got all the additonal tests though. I got upper endoscopy, a appointment with ent who put some sort of scope down my throat, bloodwork, esophagram, barium swallow test. He said he got nothing else and i am on my own and admitted that almost 90% of time they don't find anything.

Mind you this is one of most common conditions not some rare disease that needs sherlock holmes .

Studied long time ago / studied once and then forgotten / no interest in getting updated / no proper channels for getting updated / ...

Any of those could be a reason.

Because there are 12 different "causes" that are all very subtle and are highly influenced by your diet and behavior etc.

Doctors also never want to admit they dont know the answer to something

Yikes. No. If you have doctors who aren’t honest with you or honest about when they need to do more research to understand more, get the hell away and find someone else. I know not everyone has that choice, but if you do… please find a doctor who will level with you and you can trust. You do not want to get Dr. Deathed.

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