Think about how the role of the physician has changed during the last thousands of years. From the greeks to ancient egypt to modern medicine, which again, within it again has evolved extensively. In general, medicine has gotten a lot more complicated. The role of the physician has also changed rapidlly and radically. While the physician has always been a single individual, a healer, a human being capable of preventing, detecting and ultimately treating illnesses. When the world had little knowledge about medicine and conditions the physician’s job was not only far more mystic, but also a lot simpler. It really required less training, less work, less specialization.
The circumstances modern healthcare indirectly created are ubiquitious and have shaped all aspects of medicine, except for the physician.
The chopped physician is not existant, yet it should be. Modern medicine requires team work to function properly. People working in healthcare usually are responsible for very certain and defined tasks. Phlebologists take blood, Echocardiographers perform sonography of your heart, MTAs do this, and Y does that. Yet the physician has not “chopped” herself.
If physicians were to adapt to the diversification of modern medicine, than they must do so themselves by diversifying themselves. If we accept the fact, that “the” physician, in a white coat a grand knowledge of “all medicine”, capable of “healing” does not exist anymore, then the she must ultimately split herself as a logical consequence:
The Preventionist
The physician’s part neglected the most. The reality is that we do not prevent, but we treat diseases. We find them and help cure them. But we do not prevent them, not yet.
The Diagnositician
The range of the diagnostician is wide. It may range from the countryside GP working on a very broad yet superficial diagnostic level to the highly speciliazed ones where diagnosis takes longer. In comparison to all aspects of the physician the diagnostic process has been de-mystified, reduced in terms of time and standardized.
The Therapist
These days that’s probably 70% of a what a physician does. Treating people with drugs, surgeries and the likes. Through modern technology the diagnostic process has been streamlined and reduced to a minimum viable diagnostic process.
The modern physician should be a chopped one. Chopped into these 3 columns. There ought to be radically re-thought universities, training facilities and job entities. Chopping has been done in almost all walks of medicine, except for the physician. This is a logical step for a new form of healthcare.
