In spite of common sense, condition of patients under the care of seasoned doctors worsened than those with newcomers. The findings of American Journal of Medicine says that the patients whose doctors were practicing for almost 20 years stayed longer in hospital and were more likely to die as compared to the patients whose doctors were licensed in past five years.
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According to Dr Niteesh Choudhry of Harvard Medical Technology, this is due to the inability of medical profession to keep up to date with advanced knowledge. He also said, it is also the problem of quality of care which has been recognized for last 5 to 10 years.
Dr. William Southern and colleagues checked the records of over 6,500 patients who were hospitalized between 2002 and 2004 at Montefiore Medical Centre in the Bronx, New York City. Montefiore is a teaching hospital where patients are looked by a junior doctor and then he further assigned to any of the hospital’s six medical teams which in turn comprise of a medical student and recent medical school graduates lead by a senior doctor known as attending physician. During the study, there were 589 attending physicians whom the researchers divided on the basis of their practicing period: five years or less, 6 to 10 years, 11 to 20 years and more than 20 years.
Researchers restrained their study to the patients and doctors who never have met earlier. It was found that the doctors who were most and least experienced had more patient deaths in the hospital. However considering the degree of sickness of patients, it was seen that patients with complicated medical problem were at greater risk in the hands of experienced doctors. It was shown that physicians who spent more time in practice stick less to their practice guidelines. But it won’t be as easy to say that as your move away from training, the quality worsens.
The problem is not the experience of doctors but it is all about the awareness with up to date guidelines and practices. It is required to take steps to continually educate the doctors after completion of their certificate. It is recommended that doctors with more than 20 years in practice need to be recertified. It would be great idea if educational programs be developed which can enable experienced physicians to take active participation. Dr Steven Weinberger, executive vice president and CEO of American college of physicians agreed to the point that it is necessary for physicians to stay as current as possible.
