I work in health, and I sometimes have to interact with the federal database of doctors. It's amazing the things you see in there.

There are doctors who don't know their own addresses. Can't spell the name of their town. Don't know their ZIP Code. Don't know the difference between a mailing address and a physical address. Don't keep their information current. Or sometimes don't even know what town they're in, putting a neighborhood or region on federal paperwork because "everybody knows where that is."

We assume that because doctors are smart at medicine, they should also be smart at computers. They're not. Just like my commercial airline pilot neighbor is great at flying transcontinental jumbo jets, but every few days has to shout across the street at me to ask if today's the day to put out the trash bins.

Not smart at computers, but maybe they are smart about computers. Everyone thinks old people can’t use tech but what if they don’t want to and that resistance is a manifestation of wisdom that’s incomprehensible to those without the same wisdom. To believe doctors as a class of people are less intelligent than average is silly and probably ego defensive. As a group doctors are of above average intelligence and certainly smarter than most of the people they work with in IT.

I think it’s the academic and professional institutions that are most culpable for the current state of things. They should have been the ones who foisted tech requirements on doctors, instead it was done through federal regulation. Most of the blame for most of today’s problems comes back to universities. If using tech is part of the job if being a doctor, then make it so from inside the profession.

There are different types of intelligence. Both fields require totally different talent, interests and skills. One is solving very abstract problems, the other is talking to people and learning a huge amount of information about how humans work.

I am good with abstract stuff, but in no way I could remember that amount of information about people as doctors too. I still have no idea what most of my bones or other things within me are named and I have zero interest in it. I can imagine one could be also the other way around. Have huge amount of interest in people, but despise techy knowledge.

In the end both doctors and it workers are so different from each other that they have so much trouble understanding one another. Remember doctors never asked for all this abstract shit. Also as you age you will get more set in the field you choose. That is just the way people work. Not an excuse or why one should not keep improving themselves.

You're really blaming the subjects of a database for errors in that database? There are many reasons for errors that have nothing to do with anything a physician might or might not have done.

Those subjects fill out the forms that end up in the database. It isn't some faceless government agency reading their minds. The data comes from what the doctors write down.

It sounds as if the physicians are not using the database themselves. Why would they expend extra effort to ensure its accuracy? Data that must be accurate must be carefully curated, and that isn't free. When we expect others to do work to make our lives easy, we may be disappointed.