Docs & advice

It just occurred to me how important it is for doctors to pass on the right information and to make sure the advice they dispense as part of their job is evidence-based. An individual (thanks, Amy!) with whom I ate yesterday told me about a factoid that her friend’s doctor told her friend, and she passed it on to me as advice for my own personal life. So not only was the advice repeated to two people by the time it got to me, but it was also years ago that the original advice was dispensed. The doc may have been tired or distracted, he or she may not have have remembered the exact facts or the exact source of the information and perhaps had no idea whether the advice would be passed on. How often have we made big changes in our lives because “my doctor said I should”? It’s kind of sobering to have that kind of responsibility, but then again the responsibility only comes as a result of the enormous faith that people have in physicians and their knowledge. Then again, the newfound media wiredness symbolized by Wikipedia undermines that authority and has the potential to replace top-down instruction with more of a dialogue.