Simple

Contrary to what I said yesterday, it is not uncommon for amateurish medical practitioners to conclude things are often simple.

One favorite story told by WB, a friend and previous colleague of mine, is most illustrative. For a short while he was working with someone who "rotated" to the medical unit for certain months in order to fulfill the training of another specialty. After a week or so in medicine, the new comer made a casual remark to WB, "Internal medicine is not all that difficult - all you see are nothing but heart failure and chronic bronchitis and stroke and just a handful of conditions."

"Certainly," contrary to his usual self, my friend tried to be polite, "If you missed all other diagnoses !"

That's an extreme case of course. In fact most students are fascinated with all those rarities in medicine. I fancy there are several stages of maturation of a physician:

1. Interested in rare things.
2. Interested in picking up rare problems in common conditions.
3. Interested in the difference between patients with the same common condition.
4. Interested in the similarity between patients with the same common condition.

By stage 4, he becomes a clinician-scientist.