The Student Room Group

Is this one of the disadavantages of being a doctor

Doctors aren't very inventive and original. Whilst it is true that they provide quality of life to people, it also true that the origin of these treatements and medicines is the tremendous work done by chemists, physicists, biologists mathematicians and engineeers. So do scientists play a more active role in saving people's lives? I am not referring to doctors who are or have been involved in research but those who don't and make up the majority.
Original post by nothepreacher
Doctors aren't very inventive and original. Whilst it is true that they provide quality of life to people, it also true that the origin of these treatements and medicines is the tremendous work done by chemists, physicists, biologists mathematicians and engineeers. So do scientists play a more active role in saving people's lives? I am not referring to doctors who are or have been involved in research but those who don't and make up the majority.


So to paraphrase, do the Doctors who don't do research do a lot of inventive and original research (the measure by which you're judging inventiveness and originality)?

Well, no. :wink:

But to cut the snark, from what you've said I'd say doctors still play the active role in saving people's lives - scientists are passive as they're not applying it. There's a lot of scope for originality and adaptation in applying scientific principles clinically.

Ultimately, Doctors and Scientists and Health Professionals and Families save lives. The higher up you go toward the rootstem, perhaps the more people a single individual can affect. Conversely the closer you get to the person whose life is being saved the more important you are and the greater impact you have, presumably.
(edited 10 years ago)
Reply 2
Original post by nothepreacher
Doctors aren't very inventive and original. Whilst it is true that they provide quality of life to people, it also true that the origin of these treatements and medicines is the tremendous work done by chemists, physicists, biologists mathematicians and engineeers. So do scientists play a more active role in saving people's lives? I am not referring to doctors who are or have been involved in research but those who don't and make up the majority.


Well clinical research is carried out by medically qualified doctors - science is a collaborative effort so it would be unfair to give all the credit for medical advances to doctors, but equally it would be just as unfair to claim that doctors have had no role to play in those advances.

Excluding those involved in clinical research, yes, you're right, most practising doctors don't make discoveries on a daily basis. But neither do most scientists. Most scientists go through their whole careers without making a significant discovery. Even the discoveries of famous scientists e.g. Watson and Crick are in fact the continuation of work carried out by scientists who came before them.

Fact of the matter is that in the most direct and literal sense of the term, doctors do save lives, and it is in that sense of the term which people refer to doctors "saving lives" - not that they have the answers to everything.
Reply 3
You'd be hugely over-simplifying if you viewed the world like that. No not every doctor discovers a new monoclonal antibody or whatever, but virtually every doctor will be involved in some kind of clinical audit or policy-making that may well be the deciding factor in getting that monoclonal antibody to the right patients. Or in implementing nursing protocols that ensure crucial symptoms aren't missed so the antibody can be given quickly. There is more to treatment than having a medicine in a bottle somewhere.

It would also be inaccurate to state that even today your average clinician can't make observations that change medicine. Take beta blockers and haemangiomas.

And then there is the actual clinical decision - medicine is not simply 'x has disease a, give treatment m'... the evidence has to be applied to each individual in each different circumstance if you want an optimum result.

There is plenty of scope for a good clinician to save many, many lives outside of novel research. Perhaps less scope that that 1-in-a-million revolutionary discovery made in a lab that lands you a nobel prize, but that's just a decision you take when you decide to do medicine.
Reply 4
I think there's probably a more fundamental difference between scientists/researchers and doctors. If a researcher discovered a drug that was able to cure, for example, small cell lung cancer, how exactly would he have the skill to take a history, do an examination, examine radiographs, and then administer the drug to relevant patients? Doctors "save lives" by applying research already done, but that doesn't mean they play a smaller role than the people who originally discovered a drug that they're giving. Two parts of the same puzzle... wholesale and resale, so to speak.
The patient doesn't remember the scientist who invented their drug though, they remember the doctor who made them better. I'd rather change the world for an individual patient than change the world of science, tbh.
Original post by Becca-Sarah
The patient doesn't remember the scientist who invented their drug though, they remember the doctor who made them better. I'd rather change the world for an individual patient than change the world of science, tb

If the patients don't remember the scientist who invented the drug, it actually strengthens my point that scientists are perhaps unacknowledged and underrated for their efforts. I am not criticising being a doctor. I am just pointing out the limitations of being one in that they just wait for a cure to be discovered by scientists. Things like MRI are crucial inventions in medicne and doctors who have to rely on it did not contribute to it.
Original post by nothepreacher


If the patients don't remember the scientist who invented the drug, it actually strengthens my point that scientists are perhaps unacknowledged and underrated for their efforts. I am not criticising being a doctor. I am just pointing out the limitations of being one in that they just wait for a cure to be discovered by scientists. Things like MRI are crucial inventions in medicne and doctors who have to rely on it did not contribute to it.


Yes, to an extent what you're saying is true, not everyone can discover everything and we could argue where the separation lies and how applicable it is toward scientists also. Fame is notoriously fickle and some amazing scientists and their discoveries are woefully underrated.

But, I'm curious as to where you're wanting this to go. I may be misunderstanding you but so far I'm seeing:

x = x, but I'm not seeing "therefore Y is . . ."

So far I think you're delving into who plays the most active role in saving lives, and purely by use of the word active most would come down on the side of doctors. So that's led naturally to the idea that scientists are sometimes unappreciated which I can agree with wholeheartedly. Then, further to this, there seems to be the idea that perhaps you're disillusioned or angered by the fact that Doctors "just wait for a cure to be discovered by scientists". But this is only with your opening stipulation that it can't be Doctor-scientists who are involved in research.

I don't say any of this to criticise you, but I feel that there's some further point that is really at the crux of what you're trying to get from the thread that you've not verbalised yet (Perhaps that all Doctors should be trained and expected to conduct research?). If you can pin down that flighty question, I'd be extremely interested in hearing it and I'm sure there are a lot of people on this forum who'll be able to offer informative perspectives on it. :smile:
(edited 10 years ago)
[QUOTE="nothepreacher;42541945"]
Original post by Becca-Sarah
The patient doesn't remember the scientist who invented their drug though, they remember the doctor who made them better. I'd rather change the world for an individual patient than change the world of science, tb

If the patients don't remember the scientist who invented the drug, it actually strengthens my point that scientists are perhaps unacknowledged and underrated for their efforts. I am not criticising being a doctor. I am just pointing out the limitations of being one in that they just wait for a cure to be discovered by scientists. Things like MRI are crucial inventions in medicne and doctors who have to rely on it did not contribute to it.


And the person who invented the MRI did so using physics and maths disocvered decades before, the concept of electricity a couple hundred years before, and lived ina big city supported because of the farming revolutions of the middle ages.

we all stand on the shoulders of giants.

your point is incredibly poorly made.

Quick Reply