Thought Piece: the Human Aspect of Medicine

Before I begin, allow me to address the elephant in the room:

• Yes, there hasn't been one of these in over a year

• Yes, the last one similarly referenced humanity (and dignity)

• Yes, the title of the post involves humanity and I included a picture of a robot immediately

The reasoning for the latter will soon become clear, if you'll bear with me.

There was an article in the Times recently that was appropriately titled: The AI robots aren't taking our jobs — for the time being, at least.

Let's see a succint summary of the article, shall we?

The article argues that while there’s significant buzz around AI replacing human workers, especially with advancements in robotics and machine learning, the immediate threat of widespread job displacement isn’t as dire as some may think. In fact, the article suggests that the current state of AI technology isn’t yet capable of fully replacing human jobs across most sectors.

While certain jobs, especially those that involve repetitive tasks, may be replaced by robots or automated systems, there’s still a long way to go before AI can match human creativity, empathy, and complex problem-solving. The article might also highlight how automation could lead to the transformation of jobs, rather than their outright elimination — leading to shifts in the workforce rather than mass unemployment.

In addition, the article may note that the growth of AI and automation could also create new jobs and industries that didn’t exist before, even if it takes time for the workforce to adapt to those changes.

Again, there's some key takeaway points here:

• It comments on the growth of AI and that jobs involving repetitive tasks may likely be replaced by automation

• Would you be surprised if I said the above summary was in fact written by AI?

But I digress. The point of this piece was to reflect on just how essential the human element is to medicine.

As you've no doubt seen me write before, Sir William Osler (an Internist, no less), considered by many to be the father of modern medicine, once said of the noble profession: "Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability."

Yes, this is a profound quote, but in this instance let's focus less on the science and more on the art. Before you raise into an uproar, I'm not saying there isn't science involved, as that is a fact beyond dispute. I'm merely saying that it's more of an art that some care to admit.

For instance, I wrote this over a year ago on the basis of a discourse similar to this one:

Medicine truly is an amazing field. Not just because we get to touch people's lives and experience their stories, but also because of how much we get to learn about the body and it's systems. And to grasp that no matter how much we know, there's still so much more that we don't fully understand yet.

Pretty crazy to think that two different specialists in two different scopes of practice can have equally extensive yet totally different knowledge bases- about the same body!

This ties together both the art and the science, doesn't it? Not just in the length and breadth of the knowledge, but in it's minutiae, in the way that it is applied.

The way we interpret things is exactly that, down to our interpretation. These aren't just words of a diagnosis, aren't just numbers of results, aren't just pixels of a scan; no- these are patients. Real people who have turned to us at their lowest points and entrusted us as clinicians, with the sacred duty of restoring them to health.

So until AI is capable of moving beyond simply adding in the phrase (we all know the phrase, don't we?): Clinical correlation advised, at the end of Radiology or even Microbiology reports to actually being concerned with what these results mean in the broader context of a patient and their health, or their eventual return to their own life outside of hospital, I'd tend to indirectly agree with that article in the Times: the profession of Medicine needs it's human touch. Without it, things just wouldn't be the same.

Fitting that I tie things up with another of Osler's famous quotes:

"The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease"

I'll see you again.