Doc 2.0

My boss showed me his recent discussion with one of the chair professors concerning our patient last weekend. It was not very long – or, I should say, deceptively simple.

"Thank you for asking me to see Mr. X. We did review him on daily basis. As a matter of fact, the blood test requested today was not yet received and hence the parameters are all as yesterday."

"Thanks for your information. I am sure he is in good hands but the patient is very concerned. Next time when you drop by, he will be very appreciative if you pad his shoulder."

The last sentence unnerved me and for a moment I floundered.

Sure enough, from the perspective of electronic culture, it's tempting to treat our patients as an icon on the computer screen. Such phenomenon of spending time in front of a computer tracking the patients' blood count like a Dow Jones Index has been pointed out by Dr. Verghese in the New England Journal of Medicine last week. He put up the quote of Alfred Korzybski – that the map is not the territory – to laugh at this cockamamie chart-as-surrogate-for-the-patient approach.

Electronic system is glorious and helpful in a thousand all too obvious ways, but it's always perilous to use computer science to solve every human problem. If you don't believe me, think about the last time you made an enquiry phone call anxiously and ended up being directed to a digital answering machine. Mind you, this is quite similar to an answer like this: "Thank you for calling. Your doctor is currently busy. He or she is behind the screen, making every effort to monitor your health. Please press one for questions related to your white blood count and press two if…"