David Forslund [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I don't want to stop "fun", but I don't think a physician > should be expected to do this unless they want to. In that > case I think of them doing computer science, not medicine.
Physicians spend much of their working lives prescribing complex (or sometimes simple) molecules to patients in the from of drugs. To do so effectively requires increasing levels of familiarity with organic and inorganic chemistry, biochemistry and physiology, pharmacology and then clinical pharmacology (not to mention toxicology and pharmaceutics). Physicians spend much of their working lives recording, retrieving, transforming and using complex (or sometimes simple) parcels of information (about patients, treatments etc). To do so effectively requires increasing levels of familiarity with...well, there is still some debate about what the hierarchy should include, but there is no doubt it should include large chunks of computer science, or at least "information science", and many would argue it should include basic programming skills - indeed programming skills are being taught in some medical schools now. Not that most physicians will (or should need to) do their own programming in 3rd or 4th generation programming languages, any more than most physicians need to synthesise their own drugs - but it is important to appreciate what is involved. And yes, physicians (or other clinicians) who specialise in health informatics often write their own code, just like physicians who specialise in pharmacology often get involved in drug synthesis (at least drug molecule design, if not the actual beakers and Bunsen burner stuff). Tim C
