Competent

The recent hot story within our circle is certainly the unfortunate pathologist who is considered to have made a wrong diagnosis in over 100 specimens that she is responsible.

I shall not postulate how such an incident could happen (Parkinson’s law, of course), or discuss how much (or how little) this incident affects the treatment and outcome of the patients being involved. The inevitable consequence is the whole team is now under immense stress, specimens and slides are examined again and again before a formal report is issued, and no pathologist is considered  competent for independent practice unless they have 15 or 20 years of experience. For the others, even though they may have completed their specialty training, would require careful supervision of their work.

Frequent visitors of this site may remember I discussed a similar problem several years ago (see http://ccszeto.blogspot.hk/2009/06/experience.html and the related entries). To put it simply, a close supervision of doctors who have just completed their specialist training may not be a good idea because senior physicians may not be better clinicians, in terms of both skill and knowledge.

However, when we are talking about pathologists, the problem becomes more profound.

I shall explain tomorrow.