Expert

Do you see what I worry about? Before air travel and email connect the world, we seek advice from a local expert. From an ordinary patient with the bread-and-butter disease (I mean diabetes and lipid problem) to an exotic one with a rare cancer, we ask for advice from the slightly more experienced doctor next to us, and we follow obediently.


But now, we have international treatment guideline and practice standard on almost every topic. In general, these recommendations are put up by a renown experts (not necessarily in its strict literal sense - that's another story), and, with the advance in information technology, the supposedly best possible treatment option is readily available to anyone who could read.

You see? For that reason, the "middle class" - I mean the immediate seniors and local experts - of medicine vanish. Once again, we see an M-shape society: There are a few experts that put up guidelines, and the huge group of practitioners, senior and junior, as followers, willingly or not. Experience does not count much unless you become one of the elite group. Junior doctors, as long as they could read (not all of them could, I know), could also look up the latest guideline and challenge their seniors. Since everyone should be following a well-defined protocol to treat their patients, the added value of an experienced clinician is small.