Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

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Not to trash the profession, but in reality it's no different than a computer engineer, plumber, accountant or anything else.

I used to think "well med school is really hard, so the bare minimum for a doctor is pretty good". Then I started working in healthcare and realize, no, that's not true at all.

The best example I can think of is when I worked on a project where we wanted to get ready for a much better competitor in a disease area. Not "slightly better", but "mind blowing better and not using it would be malpractice". Most doctors had heard of it, but we want to remind them not to purchase the company's older drug because they'll just return it a year later.

Turns out there were multiple doctors, after the new drug was approved and available, that continued to use the old drug. We literally had to go to them and say "hey stop buying the company's drug please". And I realized, damn, these doctors' patients are getting really shitty treatment.

This is why pharmaceutical sales representatives are so important. Most doctors are far too busy treating patients day to day to stay up on every new drug that comes out. CME can help cover some of this, especially with new procedures or treatments, but nothing can keep up with the 100 new drugs for diabetes. what really helps doctors is having people that can come talk to them, tell them that drug X is better than Y, give them the literature if they want it, tell them what insurance has a chance of covering it. Some doctors will always do what they know, but the majority just need to know there is a better option.

Or just follow the clinical guidelines and associated updates. They're there for this exact reason, to make sure every doctor uses up-to-date methods. No need for sales reps in this case.

How quickly do you think clinical guidelines are updated.

If a new cancer drug was launched that could help would you prefer a doctor that said “sorry, the next guidelines update is in 9 months, so I’m not using that drug”?

How can they trust the literature? The article was just talking about how the evidence can't be trusted.

Doctors aren’t stupid. They can judge literature themselves.

My 60 years old father was at the hospital for a heart attack and the doctor wrote in his form he was a pregnant woman. That day I lost hope for any kind of baseline.

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